When the World Feels Heavy
There’s something about being at your emotional rock bottom that makes even the smallest, most fleeting moments feel like magic. Or maybe it’s not magic. Maybe it’s just the aching need for something—a spark, a softness, a reminder that beauty still exists out there. Somewhere.
Post-Wedding Blues and a Keg of Feelings
It was post-wedding chaos. Jessie and Ryan were officially hitched, and I was the one in charge of keg return duty. (Because obviously.)
Emotionally? I was not well. My ex-husband and I were barely talking. I felt disconnected from myself, from love, from everything, really. I was exhausted, hollowed-out, and leaning heavily on my favorite emotional support: music way too loud for my own good.
The Song That Found Me
Ed Sheeran’s Afire Love was playing as I pulled into Bee Well Mead & Cider in Bellaire—my chest already heavy with the kind of yearning you can’t quite name. I parked, killed the engine, opened my door…
…and the music kept going.
For a second, I panicked. Thought I left the car running. (Classic me.) But then I looked across the street, and there he was.
Guitar in hand. Singing the same song I had just been drowning in. No Bluetooth. No car stereo. Just a stranger with a guitar and a voice that carried. And for one second, one brief little flicker of a moment—
I let myself have a fantasy.
The Fantasy, in Technicolor
The kind you read about. The kind where the universe nudges two soulmates toward each other with just the right song at the perfect time.
In my mind, he saw me. Smiled. Jogged over to help me carry the keg. (Because let’s be honest, those suckers are heavy.) We’d lock eyes. And just like that—sparks. Conversation. A shared cider. A lifelong love story born out of serendipity and Ed Sheeran.
Reality’s Quiet Return
Instead?
I wrestled the heavy-ass keg solo into the building like some kind of winded troll. Attractive, I’m sure. And by the time I returned, breathless and mentally cursing barley and carbonation—he was gone.
Poof.
No name. No nod. Just a soft voice on the wind and an imaginary ending I’ll never get.
The Beauty in Make-Believe
My brain has always done this—drifting into dreams when real life feels dull and gray. I escape into daydreams because they’re safer, sweeter. They let me feel what I’m missing, if only for a second: connection, romance, being seen.
And even though reality didn’t give me the story I wrote in my head, I still remember that moment like it was stitched in golden thread.
To the Stranger with the Guitar
So to the random musician in Bellaire with your open guitar case and perfect timing:
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me a brief, beautiful pause from the weight of my world.
I hope you’re still singing. 🖤
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