My name is Bella Swan. I am twenty-five years old. I have two beautiful children, Billy and Alicia. My husband, Jacob, is what most girls dream of marrying. Strong, dependable, handsome, kind and a great father. I love him and he loves me more than anything in this world. I live with my family in a gorgeous little town called Forks.
I can't regret a single decision I have made that got me here. How could I? This life is perfect.
But, in those solitary moments when I let down my guard and my thoughts reach places within myself I rarely let them go, there is doubt, and that one lingering, incessant question: What if?
There was a time in my life, when I was very young and very naive, when the only love I knew was a turbulent whirlwind of emotions, when I thought that it wasn't true love unless your every cell yearned for his, or sang when he placed his skin on yours.
But now I know better. True love isn't about burning passion or finding your soulmate. I am now a realist. A lasting relationship has to be real. What I'd had when I was seventeen, that wasn't real. That was a fantasy, a fairytale, and could never have survived long in this reality.
And that's what I repeat to myself whenever we drive past his old driveway and my unfaithful heart clenches painfully. Or when I have to teach in one of our old classrooms and all I can see is us sitting in the corner, in the dark, just barely touching, the electricity between us almost lighting up the room.
I try so hard not to let my thoughts go to him, because when I'm not careful they start wondering what he's doing or where he is now. But the most painful thing of all is when his face flashes unbidden into my mind, because I know that wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he is still exactly as I remember him.
Dwelling on these things will only collapse the perfect life I have built around me... so I never dwell.