A Hole In My Heart: My Forty Year Search for Lost Love

At age 21 after nursing school in Bangkok, I met an impossibly handsome American GI who taught English to a group of nurses. We quickly fell in love, but it was unrequited. When he asked me to marry him, I could not answer, torn between my strict upbringing and my new and confusing desires. Soon thereafter my true love was gone, sent back to the United States completing his tour of duty in Thailand. Within a few months I received a letter from Freddie's friend John, who wrote that Freddie, the man I loved was getting married. The news devastated me and left me feeling empty and incomplete. A part of me had been torn away and I was left with a hole in my heart. Over the course of the next 40 years I wanted to mend that part of me and heal my heart. The only way was to find Freddie and tell him how I truly felt. If I died without finding Freddie I felt I would leave this earth with my eyes open and die with a hole in my heart.