3207 Days Since, 30 Left Until

Don't ask me why I'm doing this.

That's quite cliche, isn't it? I guess it's just a way for me to express my ignorance in my motives for doing this. Sure, I'm going to do my best to keep this as anonymous as possible, but I know full well that anonymity is a facade on the internet. Anybody who really wants to know something will find it out.

Years ago, I kept a journal. Wrote in it frequently for nearly six years. It's all lost to obsolete computer formats now, but it was truly helpful in helping me sort out my adolescent and young adult mind. But then, suddenly, I stopped. I don't know why. But I never started again.

Right now, I wish I had.

Not for the years lost, but for this new blog. Not to dwell on the years past, but to better flesh out the last six months that this blog will deal with.

The title of this blog states everything. It's about a very small sliver of my life, but one that is dominating my mind right now.

You see, I once loved a woman.

Yeah, like that's anything new. Certainly not a reason to get all emo and start a blog.

But this woman... I've loved her since the day I was born, I just didn't know it until I met her. She was nothing near my type, but everything I needed, and we spent a wonderful summer in love until life popped in and separated us.

That was in 1999.

I was 25, she was 17.

She lived 1500 miles north of me, in a small mountain town my mother resides in. We met the previous Christmas while I was visiting, and fell for each other through letters and phone calls over the next six months. I saw her in June while on break from school, and again in September at my brother's wedding. We spent no more than two weeks in each others' arms, but it was enough.

She joined the Army, went off to see the world. I was absorbed in mine. I got a "Dear John" letter from her, and at that moment, I finally realized how much I loved her.

Her name was not Beth, but that's what I'm going to call her.

We talked once or twice after that, and then lost touch. A year later I was in the Army myself, and on leave at my mother's for Christmas. I called her old house, hoping she might be too.

She wasn't.

She was at her duty station, spending her holiday there.

With her husband.

That was in 2000.

Seven years passed. I got into a relationship that turned to a disfunctional marriage myself. This last Christmas, I left the wife at home (because she was now a felon and couldn't leave the state) and went to see my mother. My marriage was falling apart, my mother hated my wife, and I was there two days before my mom, the smartest person on the planet, said "Oh, did I tell you? I ran into Beth a few months ago."

Of course she hadn't told me. She knew what the mention of that name did to me.

"Really?" I asked, trying to play it cool. "How is she?"

"Fine," my mother said. She stopped the information there, waiting for me to take the bait.

"How's married life treating her."

"Oh, she's divorced." My heart starts pumping a little harder.

I snorted a slight laugh, trying to look like I was maintaining my cool when, in reality, my brain was about to explode. "How many kids does she have?"

"She never had kids."

Emotional system in overdrive. The questions came out faster than I could handle them. Where was she, where did you see her, when did you see her, how did she look, did she ask about me...

A few months back, she had been working at a Supermarket in town.

Thus began a two-day mania-driven search to find her.

Finally, dead end after dead end led to a small alley, and I found her brother. I called.

I left a message.

Two hours later, she called back.

We talked for a few minutes, the sound of her voice filling the void that had been my heart for so many years, warming me in a way that my wife never could. I tried to play confident, but I was as scared as I'd ever been. My emotions, long suppressed, burst forth in technicolor at the mere sound of her sweet, nasally voice.

I had to run, get dinner with my brother and nephew. Would she promise to call back in an hour, I asked her?

She promised.

She didn't call back. Not for about three hours. And I, of course, missed the call, and her number came up private, so I had no way to return it.

Thankfully, in my searching, I had come across her myspace page. I wrote her this note:

You REALLY need to check this more often...

Ya never know who's trying to get in touch with you!

I'm very sorry I missed what I think was your call tonight at about 8:30 PM. It figures, I step out for a smoke, the phone rings...

Listen, don't feel any obligation toward me at all. Tell me to fuck off if you wish, there will be no hard feelings. I want nothing from you but to see you once more, as a long-lost friend.

If you don't want me to fuck off, then by all means, call me whenever you want. I'm still a night owl, and I'm usually up quite early.

I really look forward to talking to you.

-M

Twenty days passed and I was back in California with my wife back in jail for failing too many drug tests while on probation before I got the following reply:


hey sid, ya that was me who called. sorry, it's been a while since then and yer back home now i'm sure. ya, i got scared when you said you wanted to see me, it was weird. you know what the weirdest part about this whole thing was though? when my sister-in-law called me & gave me your number i was at christie's (my ex-sister-in-law, who I met Beth through) house and we were just talking about you and your brother!! how crazy is that! holy shit, stuff like that always miffs the shit out of me!! now that i think about it though, i should've just met up with you to say hi, cuz it has been a while, huh? do you hate me for not? so, aren't you married? i saw your mom when i worked at super 1 and i thought she had mentioned that you were. anywayz, i hope all is well with you and i hope there's no hard feelings towards me. if there is, i can completely understand! take care and talk to you soon!

beth

Obviously, there were no hard feelings, and obviously I was lying about wanting nothing more than friendship.

Months passed with not but a few messages, none with any substance. Replies came later and later, and finally a time came to make a decision: Do I play my cards close to my chest, afraid of getting no further replies instead of sporadic ones, or do I lay it all out?

After a month of debating, of working out wording, of figuring out everything I wanted to say, I sent her this email, entitled "Last Round In The Magazine":

Sorry it's taken me a month to get back to you. Been going through a lot lately, and honestly, writing these things to you is difficult. You once told me I had a way with words, which is my only true talent, but even with that the care I have to exercise in choosing what to say here is extreme. I have to walk a very fine line to make sure what I want gets through, without going overboard.

I suppose the reason I'm writing now is I had a dream about you the other night. Like most of my dreams, once I'm awake and the ether clears I'm left with little but fragments of images and feelings from these gorgeously detailed nightly visions. In this one, I was up at my mom's (though, as dreams work, it could hardly be recognized as such), and for some reason, the people there had the ability to write on the lake. They'd paint these beautiful pastels of words and images, and when complete these would reflect on the sky, a combination of awe-inspiring fireworks & the Aurora Borealis. And as I was watching this, my mind could not soak in the beauty of it all, could not revel in the depths of the fantastic I was witnessing, because I was preoccupied with finding you.

One of the saddest moments of my recent life was your email asking if I was still mad at you. The sorrow was twofold; first, that after all these years, you'd still wonder that. Second, that you would wonder that about me. I suppose I did little to dissuade those thoughts a decade ago, so I can't blame you for naturally feeling that way.

But I can clear things up.

(After this, I really don't expect to hear from you again, hence the title of this mail.)

It has always been my opinion that a human being is incapable of loving something without it irrevocably changing them. We give love so sparingly as we age that the simple act of doing so is written in our hearts not like pen on paper, but like chisel on marble. While the sands of time may erode the crisp freshness of what is carved there, in the least the very slight details, the nuances of individual love, will always remain in some fashion.

Most will compare love to a fire, and it is not an incorrect analogy, as it does consume us when it is at its brightest. But it can never be truly extinguished in the furnace of our hearts, and each love that passes remains an ember always to be carried with us.

With that, no, I am not mad at you. I was, but that was more that I was mad at myself than I was at you. Beth, I will always love you. Until my last breath, until I fade from this earth and ash returns to ash, you will always be in my heart, if not my life.

(This was where I was worried about treading a fine line, as I'm sure you can see. Hopefully, you'll make it past this before deleting this email, as it'll help paint the bigger picture.)

Does this mean that my heart is all-consumed by the memory of you, that my lips are aflutter with the mention of your name? That when I searched you out in December that I was looking to once again share hearts, minds, and bodily fluids with you? No. I am and I was a smart man, Beth, and I recognize that time passes just like any other. I am different person than I was a decade ago, as are you. I don't even know that I'd like you anymore, and I'm not sure you'd like me. I was (and am) just hoping that I could reconnect with you again on some level, that we could be more than invisible to each other, that we could maybe, possibly, one day be friends. Because my life is a better place with you in it than without it.

But I tell you right now, that as I reach the 1 mile marker in my life (only an Army girl would understand that one!) and I look back among the loves & losses, yours is the only one I regret (including my current one). I will always believe you were the one that got away. Maybe soon that will change, I will meet the woman I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with and will settle down to a "happily-ever-after" that I just don't believe in.

If suddenly Doc Brown were to appear to me and offer me a Delorean ith a Flux Capacitor, I'd set it back ten years & write you daily prose poems like this.

But somehow, I don't think that is going to happen.

So I'll just have to accept things as they are, and hope that maybe one day you'll warm to me even just a fraction of a bit.

I suppose it's a bad time to say I hope we can be friends when I've so thoroughly scared you with stalker words like these, but please know that I don't do this to be scary or obsessive. Just to be honest.

Love,

Sid

I sent it on April 17 of this year, truly not expecting a reply, just happy to get it all off my chest, so I could never look back with regret about the road not taken.

A week later, I got this response:

hey there sid! wow, i don't really know what to say, surprised, but you brought a smile to my face hearing how you feel. i'm sorry to have dissappointed you and making you feel sad when i asked if you were still mad at me. i already knew in my heart that you weren't, or you wouldn't have tried to get in touch with me. i just wanted to let you know that i still felt bad for how things happened but didn't know how to say it. i can't believe it's been almost 10 years!! life is crazy! we had some great times!!

i will never forget about you sid, nor do i ever intend to. i agree with you enormously when you say the nuances of love will always remain in some way. nobody forgets about the individuals who touch their lives even if the time spent together was brief or long. if i can consider you as my friend and myself as yours, i would be very pleased. i don't want us to be invisible to eachother. i regret not meeting up with you while you were here to visit. i was a bit scared and didn't know what to expect- i pussed out on you and i'm sorry.

i've got your phone number and plan on calling you soon. i wish i could talk to you right now and see you sitting right in front of me, but i blew that chance away in december! you will find that perfect woman that you deserve, or she'll find you first! i think i'm in the same boat you are on that whole situation. all you can do is keep on day to day and believe that in time it will happen. i guess that's kindof how i think of it. ???

anywayz, it was great hearing from you and you haven't scared me away! i don't think you could. i hope you have a wonderful day and i will talk to you soon Sid.

Love,
Beth

Once again, happiness.

Since then we've talked on the phone a bit, but not with any regularity. In the first conversation, all the pretenses came down, and by the end we were both telling the other "I love you."

It was the happiest I've been in a long while.

Since then, she's cooled a bit, but I wear my heart on my sleeve. I know she's not wanting to jump into anything, and I know she's been hurt deeply since she walked out of my life. But in every conversation we have, I can hear the desires of her heart just as loudly as I can hear the conflict in her head.

Last week, I finally got a plane ticket. On July 16, I will be flying up to visit my mother & the rest of my family.

And see her.

I haven't talked to her in a few weeks. I've tried calling the last few days, but apparently (according to her voicemail message) she's lost her phone.

She never calls me anyway. Every phone call since the first has been initiated by me.

So yes, the negativity and doom that dominate my mind have crept in. I worry that she's too scared of revisiting this, that once again the prospect of this confronting her in the flesh will be too much and my entire trip will expire without seeing her.

But I still have hope.

The last time I talked to her, to let her know that the funds had finally come together for a plane ticket, she was having an issue with her second ex-husband (she's been married twice). I told her "You just married the wrong man." She said, with a twinge of sadness in her voice, "I know."

So yes, the doomsayer in my brain worries constantly that this will slip through my fingers.

But for the first time since I can remember, my heart carries something in it I so desperately need:

Hope.

If anybody comes across this, pray to whichever deity you may worship for me, or keep me in your good thoughts.

There's a lot more to say, and only a few days left to say it.

It's been 3207 days since I held her in my arms. With that hope, it'll be 30 more until I hold her once again.