by Billie Melissa

The date is November 16th, 2017. There’s a church that’s lost in the middle of fields; our best kept secret, our hiding place. I’ve walked in those fields and cried. I’ve walked in those fields and felt pure peace wash over me. I now walk through those fields with the person who carries me through each day. You can see the lights from an overhead bridge where traffic bustles miles away but in this spot, it is still. It is quiet. There’s something overwhelmingly peaceful about seeing lights at a distance. It’s a huge comfort to know that somewhere from where you stand there’s people living their own life and experiencing their own moments that you will never know about.

I have one of those moments for myself, miles from those lights. I turn to face the person I love who is down on one knee in the dark and everything from then is a blur. It’s a mixture of tears and gratitude and joy and peace. No single decision in my life has been easier to make than agreeing to begin the rest of my life with a boy I met at 17 who came to me in the most unexpected of ways. It’s bizarre in a wonderful way that a short conversation I had on June 1st, 2013 would change the course of my life.

“There’s something overwhelmingly peaceful about seeing lights at a distance.”

With less than five months before I become a wife I’ve been reflecting on what that will mean to me. I am now 22 and we have been together for five and a half years. The people we were when we first met seem like memories that do not belong to us and yet they helped build something that’ll lead to one of the greatest adventures life can throw our way.

The process of planning a wedding is much like what I imagine marriage will be like. A consistent jumble of months that are joyful in a way that you cannot fully see until it’s one night in summer and you turn around in a sea of people you love to meet eyes across the room with the one that bought you to this moment. There’s a quote in my favourite film, Frances Ha, that speaks to this:

‘It’s a secret world that no one else knows about that exists right there in public unnoticed.’

It’s one of the most accurate descriptions of what it’s like to love someone. In the momentary eye contact lives years of memories that were once only small conversations and firsts. You’re out there in a world of people who are walking their own paths and yet the two of you share a secret world amongst the 7.6 billion people on this planet. How peculiar that at one point all of these singular moments between you both were simply the beginning to a bigger story you had no idea would bloom to become something so full.  


Billie Melissa | _billiemelissacinematicfaves.com

Billie is currently in her final year of studying filmmaking in London with the aim of becoming a director. In July of 2018 she founded her website, Cinematic Faves, which reviews and covers new releases and film festivals. 


Support Dear Damsels

Words are empowering – not only for the women who write them, but those who read them too.

Join our Patreon and help us continue to offer an inclusive and welcoming space for women to come together, share their words, and get a resounding response back.

Sign up to our Patreon