Four score and four more years have passed….

It’s been a few years since I have blogged anything to this site. Four years to be exact. Truth be told, I pulled back because of negative comments that came my way after sharing the blog with a few people close to me. Nothing positive came from the comments. And that upset and frustrated me.  It left me questioning myself. It left me questioning those closest to me who had nothing positive to say.      

So…..I chose to back off and make sure it was something I really wanted to try to continue doing.  I had to ask myself – Did I really want to drag my family into my daily/weekly/monthly diatribes for the possible entertainment of others? In giving it much time and thought, the answer was…not really.

Now here I am. A lot has happened in four years. As life does.

Four Score and Four More Years gone by….

Now I have more of a need to put my thoughts onto paper (or computer). Just for me. And I’m not really interested in journaling it somewhere in a notebook or whatever. I don’t really care who reads this, but I won’t be sharing it with those I know. Maybe I will be brave enough to share it with others someday in the future. For now, I just need to say the things I can’t seem to bring up or discuss with anyone. Putting words out into the mysterious internet universe seems the best place at the moment.  I finally realize that not having any expectations other than expressing my thoughts here seems to be a good way for me to start.

The biggest thing that has been heavy on my mind for the past few months, and really, the past year – Is the fact that I’m nearly 11 years divorced, and I have not found anyone whom I can truly see myself spending what’s left of my life with (OTHER than my kids).  

This idea really weighs me down. In the beginning of my divorce, I truly thought that sometime by the 10 year mark, I would have found someone to share my life with.

And a little over a year ago, I thought this year was going to look very different than how it is turning out.  I thought that someone had finally walked into my life. The one person I would have truly wanted to walk back into my life. But, it’s funny how life takes sometimes cruel and crazy twists on the road to finding that blissful happiness we all seek and desire. 

Let me preface this by saying – when I divorced 11 years ago, as anyone who has gone through this knows, it was scary. It was daunting to the point of being overwhelming at times.  It was a giant leap of faith that this drastic change in my family’s life would somehow manage to bring some peace and calm to otherwise stressful times in our lives. And for the most part, it did eventually happen. It wasn’t easy getting to that point. There were days or weeks when sometimes things came to a standstill. And then magically we would move forward into another level that was better than where we had been. But peace seems to just lurk around the corner, enticing me forward, but never really being attainable.  I take two steps forward, and that lurking corner moves two steps ahead as well. I’m not able to quite get there.  Of course, other factors and stressors have entered into the picture to alter the stress in other ways over the years.  And in the midst of all that, I had this…well…belief, somewhere deep inside me, that someone would come my way that I just knew I was meant to be with, and that all this was meant for a reason. That all this was worth it, in the end.

Silly me.

How naïve and girlish of me to think this.

While wrestling with all the difficulties of trying my best as a parent to ensure my children were navigating new normal of a divorced family, in as healthy a way as possible, and trying to find the most positive ways to co-parent with their father, I was also trying to navigate the dating world. Dating on and off, and having two serious relationships over these past 11 years. I won’t go into those details at this time. Those are things maybe I will write about another day.

But there was one person.

One man.

The one who got away.

The one I felt was my soulmate.

The one I let go of so many years ago, yet struggled to let go of in my heart.

He changed my life and changed my heart in so many ways. He gave me strength to see the good within myself and the strength to believe in myself in a way no one else ever had done before, not even my ex-husband. The last time I had seen him in person was 25 years ago. And that was a crushing moment for me that has haunted me all these years later. Aside from the casual greeting from time to time, things seemed to have changed in the last year. And then they changed again. And it’s left me feeling confused, frustrated, sad, and honestly…..lost.

This is what I need to write about for now. A chain of events which happened recently that have left me just dumbfounded really. Not sure how to move forward. Except with no choice other than to keep moving forward. I try not to think about it, only to have it pop up constantly. And keeping it bottled up inside me and not having anyone to discuss with, is not doing me any favors. Therapy has been helpful in so many ways, except this. I am not in the mood for therapy right now. So I’m starting here. The empty world of the internet. For now, this will be my therapy of sorts. So Dr. Internet….here goes.

A few years after my divorce, I began to have this nagging idea in the back of my mind that would surface from time to time…this whispering…

What If?.....

What if he appeared in my life again? What if by some unexpected turn of events, he was suddenly available again? What would I do, if I knew this information? What if this was to ever become some sort of reality for me in the future, and I was with someone else? What would I do? How would I handle it?

Part of me was embarrassed to even think it. I felt like in thinking it, I was putting it out there to wish ill-will on him. And his family. And that was not what I wanted for him or for anyone. Ever. However, I certainly had known people who went through many different ways of finding themselves single again, and then ended up with the person from their youth that they regretted losing. Somehow those people connected again and found happiness together. If it was a reality for them….what if it could be a reality for me someday?  

Initially, I still felt this was an absurd idea.  We’d barely spoken to each other much in the year or so that had led up to this sudden whim in my head. I had been the one who found him on social media the year before. I had been wondering what had happened to him in the years since. I found him, through a strange series of coincidences, on LinkedIn. Not Facebook, or Instagram, or those other more obvious ways. Oh I had certainly tried. I wanted to know if he had a family, had a pretty wife, had all the signs of a happy busy family. But of all places, LinkedIn. It was odd in some ways. LinkedIn was not the place to snoop around and see the photos of the happy family vacations, what food he was bbqing on the weekend, the people he was hanging in the pub with on a Saturday night. I gave it a few weeks of thought, wondering if it was a good idea whether or not to reach out. But in the end, I just wanted to know he was doing well. That he was happy. And I wanted to thank him for showing me the belief and strength I had needed to have, to be at the place I was in my life at that time. So, I sent him a message to let him know that I had hoped he was doing well. That I thought of him often over the years, and that I had hoped he had found some peace and happiness in his life. It was a couple of months before he actually responded back, seemingly in complete shock to hear from me after so many years. After a few short exchanges of emails, things quieted down, life continued on. I learned he was married and had a family, that he was working towards his goals in his career that he aspired to from all the years earlier when I knew as much about him. And as much as it was a stab at my heart, I was honestly really happy for him – that he had found that success and happiness in his life I always imagined he deserved. I truly wanted nothing better for him and for his family.  He had been so very good to me in ways too difficult to describe here, and I always wanted nothing but the best for him after our relationship had ended.   Any contact we had, I just wanted to hear about his life, his kids, all the good things we love hearing about of any of our friends. Over that year or so, when we had managed to connect again, mostly through texting, it was polite, it was courteous, and it was respectful. He was really not a man of many words. Not like when I had known him so long ago. Once in a while his humor would come through with something sprinkled into the otherwise very basic conversations of “how ya doing?” etc., and I would think “There he is!” It was so innocent, and so simple. But it was nice to know he was out there, alive, enjoying his life.

Then one evening, about a year or a little more than, the dreaded thought entered into the picture.

This thought of What If?

It evolved.

And I remember the day that it started.

When we had connected again, we agreed that SOMEDAY we would somehow find a way to actually catch up. To have a real conversation, and talk about our lives, and really really catch up. It never really happened though. After that agreement, from time to time, we would send a brief note or text to each other. But it was not very often. He was always very respectful and kind and courteous in our conversations. Conversations, meaning texts. And these text/conversations were probably twice or thrice a year.

Mostly around a holiday of some sort, or a birthday greeting.

Once in a blue moon it was a random time in the year where it was just a friendly message to say Hello! How is your family? How are you? Hope life is treating you well. Hope the season has been a good one!  Hope you are enjoying some summer vacation…etc. With funny comments sprinkled in here and there.

The reality was…well duh…he was married. And he was what I assumed to be Happily Married. With Kids. And living his happy life. And within the context of our brief texts, he never mentioned anything that led me to think any differently. For me, though a pang of wishing-things-had-turned-out-differently-for-us rose up at times, it was good for me to hear he was happy. It made all the things we both went through years ago seem as though it was what was supposed to be; that he was where he was meant to be. It made my heart happy for him.  And there was no desire on my end to be a burden, to interrupt or disrespect that happiness or disrespect his family in any way.

And then one evening, things tilted off center a bit.

As the saying goes – I remember it so clearly. It was about 9 years ago. It was a Friday night. It was in May. It was near my birthday. And it was the night before graduation for the grad students at the university where I worked. We were celebrating the students. Charcuterie hors d’oeuvres and wine were flowing. It was a lovely evening. And oddly enough, he had popped into my mind that very same morning. A weird sort of feeling that made me think he was near me somewhere. Ridiculous and odd, but not unusual for me either. It was fleeting.

Yet suddenly that same evening, during the student celebration, out of the blue….I received a text message from him.  Asking me something to the effect of “OK, so I need to ask you….How did you know for certain that things were at an end in your marriage? What was the deciding factor? What did that look like and how did I have the courage to go through a divorce? Asking for a friend…”

I think I must’ve read the message multiple times. And I let it set for a bit. Then I read it again a few more times.

And I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know the right way to respond at first. Was he asking for himself, as I was assuming, or was he really asking for a friend?

My heart skipped several beats, THAT, I’m sure of.  I knew I needed to respond in a respectable and honest way. 

I don’t recall the entire context of the conversation after that, exactly.  It wasn’t a long one. He wasn’t one for a lot of words, really. That was probably the most words he had texted me in one sentence. I DO know I responded with some surprise.  I listed out a few deciding factors, without much detail, that I could easily say were reasons for the eventual demise of my marriage of 19 years. I tried to keep it simple and matter-of-fact. And I know I asked him what was going on that prompted his asking me this?    

He sort of backed off when I asked.

He gave me some general comments that made me understand that he probably was in some sort of argument with his wife at the time, or that they had been having some sort of issues. But the thing I caught in between the lines, was that he wasn’t happy. At least that was what I picked up on, without his really SAYING it.  And I suddenly wondered, if he was really happy. It was the first time I thought this.
And then he sent me a picture of the San Diego bay.

What on earth?! Was he here in CA, like the feeling I had had earlier that morning?

He HAD been in San Diego. Whether it was then, or he was already back home, he never completely explained. He confirmed he had been there. He just didn’t confirm WHEN. But it left me a little unglued.

And THAT was the night that I went home and began to think to myself  "What If?"

However, after that night….for years, actually…nothing else changed. Nothing was any different after that. He never spoke of that discussion again, unless I happened to pinpoint the question to say How Are You? Are Things OK?   And he would politely respond with something such as Things are good. We went back to the usual twice or thrice mini conversation/texts a year. How are you? How is the family? Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, etc. Sometimes a comment such as something happened that made me think of you today….hope all is well. And that was it. For another 5 years or so, this was all that there ever was in the form of communication with him. I was glad that whatever prompted that question from him that one night, were what I assumed a possible drunken text in the midst of an upset moment, and nothing more.

But the "What If?"

It would nag at me.

And after that brief and surprising glimpse into the idea that maybe things were not so copacetic in his world, every relationship I ventured into…they never really had an honest chance. I would get as far into the relationship as I could.  If I wasn’t already bored with the situation, and finding it wasn’t going anywhere for me, or the person wasn’t already bored with me, or they weren’t what I thought, or vice versa, then eventually the What if? would creep up from the back of my mind – a soft and low whisper in my ear, sometimes it would wake me up in the middle of the night, nudging me; slipping in like an illicit lover in the darkness; and I found myself comparing whatever relationship I was in at the time, to what I had all those years ago with HIM.  And eventually I would cool things off or I would walk away completely from those current relationships.

No one measured up.  

That What If? would come into my mind….and I thought it wasn’t fair to anyone. Because the answer to the What If? was becoming more and more clear to me.  No matter who I was with, nor what relationship I was in – if the What if? somehow became a reality for me……I would walk away from everyone and every relationship, just to find out if that What If? had anything left, any value, in its quiet little existence.  I would drop everything, because he had been worth it all those years ago. He had once changed his life for me. And thus, I would do it for him. Because I owed him that. I owed it to myself. And I would have no regrets about it. I would end up hurting someone I otherwise cared deeply about. And I didn’t want to do that to anyone.

As I said before, 5 or 6 years later, things were the same. Nothing special. Nothing different. Hello…how are you?..hope all is well….how are things? Happy Holiday….

Until one day.

That one day…a text came to me. Along with a proposition I never expected from him.