Everyone had always warned me about adventurers; they said their love of the endless ocean was far more powerful than the love they could feel for any woman. I still fell for him, though, and I would have sworn on my heart and soul that we could have made it through forever, hand in hand.
Six years later, I was finally starting to believe them. It wasn't as though he didn't love me, but the constant beckoning of the seas kept him far out of my reach day in and day out. With each passing day, he drifted farther out, becoming more and more distant.
It had started almost eight months after we'd been married. He stopped coming home for lunch, then even skipped supper, and he buried himself in maps and tales of the high seas any time he was home. We had a daughter, and he became slightly less scarce, but by the time he realized how truly precious our time with her was, she was already long gone from us.
I missed her, missed him… I missed our family. But grief only drove him further away; he blamed himself, and soon, people began to talk.
'He must have another woman.'
'Poor girl, she should just leave him. It's time to move on.'
I still clung to my desperate hope that he would come back, but in my heart I knew that the poisoned whispers were right all along. He was in love with the ocean, and he was as lost in his starry dreams of adventure as I was in my own fantasy of his return to shore.