Our wedding day was exactly what I had always imagined it would be — soft music, candlelight dancing across smiling faces, and the man I believed was my forever standing beside me.

Every detail shimmered with hope. My mother cried during the vows, my best friend toasted to “a love that felt fated,” and I remember thinking — as his fingers laced through mine — that this was it. The long search, the heartbreaks, the waiting — all of it had led me here.