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“Next time, I’m sending a message to make sure she’s not… otherwise occupied.” My muttering earns me a quickwooffrom Henry. Some days, I swear he understands me better than half the people do, and I don’t mind that one bit.
“I know,” I let out a shaky breath. “I guess it’s just the two of us, buddy.”
Pulling out my phone, I open up my camera app with the help of the voiceover and hit the record button. In the last few months, I’ve been working on getting some raw footage that Jade would go over and help me edit to post on my Instagram and TikTok. As it turns out, she was right. People like watching videos about guide dogs, or maybe it was just dogs in general they liked. Honestly, who could blame them? Dogs were amazing. And since the comments and requests kept coming from my followers to post more, I decided to stick with it. The goal of today’s video? Show them Henry as a working dog and as a regular dog.
“C’mon, Henry, let’s go to the dog park.”
There is that familiar tug at the end of the harness as we start walking, my mind still on what I had to endure listening to, and that usual anxiousness tightening my stomach.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for my friends. This past year, they’ve gone through hell and back quite literally. So if somebody deserved to find their happily ever after, it was Jade and Prescott. I might have even felt a little bit of glee when they finally got together since I called it over a year and a half ago when they were at each other’s throats. But it didn’t matter because I could sense there was something more going on between them, and I was right.
But things are different now.
Not only did my friends—Jade, along with her roommates Rei and Grace—move out of the apartment across the hall from me, but they were also all happily paired up. Hell, Rei even got engaged last winter!
It was crazy. We are all barely twenty-one, for Godsake!
But if I am being honest, if only with myself, it wasn’t our age that had me second-guessing everything lately.
I was no stranger to love. I was present when my older sister fell in love with her now husband when we were all just scrawny teens, and I’ve witnessed it bloom over the last few years. Emmett was the perfect example of how a man should love a woman. He and Kate taught me what it means to be loved. And this summer made me realize I want it too.
I want this big, crazy, overwhelming love for myself.
I want to be loved like that.
I want to love somebody like that.
But some days, I couldn’t help but wonder, if my friends found that once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, why couldn’t I?
It felt petty just thinking about it. And yet, the question has been bugging me all summer long. There was this unsettling feeling brewing just under my skin, and no matter what, I simply couldn’t shake it off.
Ineededto do something.
I’m not sure what that something was, but I knew it was there. I was determined to find that missing piece that’s left a hollowness inside me.
It wasn’t just about finding love either.
It was about findingme.
In the last couple of years, I’ve settled. Due to my blindness, the transition from Bluebonnet to Blairwood hasn’t been the easiest. I had to learn how to navigate my new surroundings. Before my freshman year of college, I asked the agency that gave me Henry, to send one of their representatives to Blairwood with me. They helped me and Henry learn how to navigate the campus, but more importantly, they showed me how to teach Henry any new routes I might need since every semester my schedule changes.
These days, I’d arrive early and teach Henry our new routes to and from classes with the help of one of my friends, as well as remind him of the old paths. Even so, Blairwood felt like I was home. I have Henry. I have an amazing apartment. I have a great group of friends. I’m enjoying my classes, my independence.
It was something I fought so hard for over the last few years, and lately, it felt like I’ve been wasting it.
Maybe it was time to try something different, something new, and exciting and perhaps a little bit wild.
A bucket list of sorts.
Isn’t that what normal college kids do?
A few ideas already start shaping in my head as the excitement buzzes under my skin, so strong I barely notice Henry slowing down.
“Forward, Henry.”
A heartbeat passes as he weighs his options. The car passes by us, and only then does he move to the side to avoid some obstacle.
I could totally do it.
