It’s late December 2020. Almost immediately after writing that placeholder blog post (Date #27 Part 1), I am feeling the Christmas spirit of openness and sharing. I draft an email to Henry.

In the email I explain how much energy he gives me when we’re in the same room. I tell him that once upon a time, when he exclaimed happily that he was in my dating range, if I hadn’t been jet lagged & tired I would have asked him out.

I don’t send it.

I head to Utah. I spend the beginning of January 2021 back at Unite — a super effective gym/nature based fitness camp in Salt Lake City that first sparked my mindfulness journey back in 2015. Its trainers taught me to pay more attention to the now. To notice my own thoughts, desires, many things I had spent a lifetime learning to suppress. To follow joy. To bravely take steps, even if what follows next is unknown.

Yes, to follow a whim to take my first trip to Argentina in Oct 2015.

I had gone to Argentina that first time without an agenda, just wanting to be present in the most macroeconomically interesting place in the world at the time. Oh yes, there had been the added benefit of an excuse for a meeting with Henry — who cheerily had agreed to meet me. He’d shared his advice and views on Argentina. There’d been palpable energy in the room.

That trip was the beginning of a new life chapter — internationally based, living independently, outside the guardrails of institutions I had been operating within all my life.

Now, with the January 2021 fitness refresh, I feel ready to take a decision about where to spend Covid Year 2. Sadly not Los Angeles, my former home of 11 years which recently returned to Covid lockdown. Not Argentina yet, with its borders frustratingly remaining shut. I want to be back in Argentina for reasons I don’t understand; it’s not about Henry. I develop a Plan B with an American friend who lives in Buenos Aires; she agrees to sign off as my ‘cohabitating partner,’ but the paperwork is cumbersome and risky, and also I really don’t like lying.

But Colombia is super Covid-open at the moment; it houses many friends I’ve wanted to re-visit for years; and it’s halfway to Argentina. Decision made, ticket bought. I park myself in Medellin for a few months while continuing to work remotely.

I feel in the prime of my life. I am healthy, fit, seeing a trainer 3 days a week at 7am (coincidentally one of my former trainers from Unite!), eating ridiculously well, making cycling friends. I’m often found pedaling a borrowed road bike up Medellin’s tortuously steep hillsides, usually while listening to Spanish shows, podcasts — including recent interviews with Henry on the Argentinian economy.

Weeks pass. It is March 2021. The tangible feeling of regretting risks not taken is heavy, pushing down on my chest. My mind drifts back to the drafted email from December. I feel the desire to send it. Meanwhile, I am strong with my affirmations. I identify and go after what I want. I am worth it. I am his equal. He is looking for someone like me.

One of my doubts has been uncertainty about his relationship status. So I do a google search. I find a very recent YouTube video in which he gesticulates a lot. He is visibly not wearing a wedding ring. That’s good enough for me. I pull up the drafted email. Copy and paste into a new email.

“Dear Henry,” I write. “Hope you are well! I drafted this email back in December, and regretted not sending it. So, here you go!”

I hit send.