When I Fall In Love All Over Again

Kashmir was always a dream in my head.

A place I imagined visiting with a partner.

Hands intertwined.

Shikara swaying gently.

Mountains watching quietly.

A life that never happened… at least not in the way I once pictured it.

But life had other plans.

I went with my children instead—

our first vacation after the divorce.

A chapter I never imagined writing,

and yet… here I was.

When I sat on the shikara that evening,

the sunset spilling gold over the water,

couples around me holding hands,

building memories I once thought would be mine—

something inside me tightened.

Not with regret.

Not with envy.

But with an old ache I had carried so quietly

that I didn’t even realize it still lived inside me.

And then—

something shifted.

On that shikara…

with the mountains reminding me of a vastness I had forgotten,

with Adiyogi standing in the distance—steady, ancient, witnessing—

something softened inside my chest.

Not a new truth.

Not an epiphany.

But a knowing I had always felt in my bones,

a knowing life had been whispering through every wound:

It all makes sense.

Every detour.

Every heartbreak.

Every tear swallowed at night.

Every version of myself I had to bury and rebuild.

None of it was punishment.

It was preparation.

The kind that strips you,

shakes you,

stretches you,

and then—years later—

hands you a moment like this…

a moment you can finally hold

without collapsing.

I didn’t fall in love with my fate on that lake.

That happened long ago—

on nights I sat with my own ruins

and still chose to rise.

What happened that evening was different.

It was recognition.

Alignment.

A quiet, almost unshakeable knowing

that my story had been rearranging itself all along—

even on the days I thought it was falling apart.

And maybe that’s the strange grace of healing:

It doesn’t give you the life you once dreamed of.

It gives you the life you were meant to grow into.

A life that reveals its meaning slowly,

piece by piece,

only when you’ve survived enough

to understand its language.

That evening on the shikara,

I didn’t fall in love with a dream.

I fell in love all over again with myself, with my life, with my destiny,

With the Divine’s plan.

With the wild, inconvenient, fiercely honest way

life rearranges itself

when you trust it—

even after it breaks your heart.