3230 Days Since, 1 Week Until

Soul Mate or White Whale?

Lately, I have been only writing in this blog when I talk to her. I just don't feel like I have anything to say unless there is something new to add. I've chronicled our history here, I've poured out and poured over my heart & its intentions, I've written basically all there is to say, at least as far as the Cliffs Notes version goes. I could write an endless epic in prose about this woman, about her affect on me, about how I feel about her, and I'd never come close to finishing it.

But here, I finally have something to add that doesn't include a conversation with her. Sure, I tried calling her last night, and we exchanged a text message today, but there's nothing important in that sense to write about.

This, as the bolded sentence fragment above suggests, is a tempest within my mind that I've been dealing with for the last few days as The Date draws closer.

It comes down to simply this: Is she my one true love, or is she an obsession?

Let us see both sides of the argument here.

Side 1: Soul Mate

First off, I'm really sorry I couldn't find a better picture than that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find pictures of romantic love, soul mates, that kind of thing, using Google image search? Well, OK, it is VERY easy, but the last thing I want to paste here is a pic of some 19-year-old girl getting penetrated by multiple men. Seriously, it was VERY hard to find a picture that came even close to what I wanted.

And I suppose that's because everybody's image and definition of love is different. Everybody has a different vision of what the physical manifestation of their heart's true desire would look like. I like this one not for the flowery beautiful white people embracing, but for the light that emanates from them, because that's part of how I see it.

And that's how it is with her. I truly believe that I have loved her my entire life, I just didn't know it until I met her. Actually, that's not true at all. I just didn't know it until she showed me.

I have never been the guy to aggressively pursue a woman. I'm not the guy who thinks a girl is cute, and tries every trick in his book to get in her pants immediately. I've always been the kind of guy who gets to know a woman a bit, who flirts, who talks, who wants to know a bit about who he's going to stick his penis in. Not that I haven't been your average, sex-obsessed guy with no regard for feelings. Because that's exactly how it started with Beth (fuck I still hate that name).

While up North one Christmas, my future ex sister-in-law showed me her picture, and I was smitten. Well, at least I didn't know I was. All I felt was horny.

So, at a drunken high school party at my brother (who was out of high school) and my future ex sister-in-law's house (who was not), I met her, I came on to her, I made out with her, I held her hair when she threw up, I tried to fuck her, and she didn't give in.

But there was something there, and I exchanged addresses and telephone numbers with her.

She wrote me a letter telling me about this hot guy she was totally in love with, I called her to tell her it really wasn't like that and I wasn't in love with her or anything, we talked for hours, she wrote me telling me she was in love with me, I called back and slowly let her down, and we fell for each other over a six-month period until I saw her again.

We had lots of sex, and I finally realized where my heart lay, and I told her so.

When she joined the Army and left me, it broke my heart. I was very angry for a long time, but she was never out of my thoughts. When I joined the Army (yes, a stupid move to prove something to myself and her), her picture was in my wall locker for as long as I had one, even though she had married less than a year after she broke it off with me. There were other women, including the one I married, but she was never far from my thoughts, and not a day would pass without me actively thinking about her. Occasionally, when I'd start to lose interest when having sex with one of these women, I'd think of her to speed things up...

Thinking back on it, every woman I have been with since September of 1999 has been a rebound woman.

In high school, I was the shy type who would admire from afar. Every woman I'd ever wanted never became a part of my love life. As I grew older and more self-assured, the women I ended up with were usually those that things just kind of fell into place. There was no magic, there was no true passion, we just kind of fell together.

Until Beth. Everything with her seemed fairytale, seemed a part of a perfectly scripted play of romance. At least, in retrospect it does. I know I'm sugar coating it, but in comparison to every other relationship I've had, it was. And in comparison to every other love I've had, they've all paled.

Even those I would carry in my heart for a long, long time were nothing in comparison to the years and distance I would carry her.

At any point in any of my relationships since, including on my wedding day, if you had asked me "Would you drop everything with your current love for just the chance, a one-in-a-million shot, of restarting your relationship with her?" I would have answered honestly, and I would have answered "yes" without even taking a second to think about it.

And it would be enough if I were alone in this. But to find out three months ago that a lot of these same feelings were being carried in her heart, were on her mind after all these years, well, it floored me. I was a 25-year-old when all this happened. She was 18. I had been in a few long-term relationships and had my share of sex before her. She hadn't. The fickleness of love in those early years, when hormones yell louder than emotions, I expected that I had been long forgotten when I tried to contact her in December and when I wrote that letter in April.

I was wrong.

Now, in one week, I face the great unknown. I know what's in my heart, but will my head fuck it up? Will hers? Will we see each other, touch each other, and feel the spark, the light, the epiphany that we are finally in the right place? Or will one of us, while the other realizes that they were in love with an image, not a reality?

Goddamn I think too much.

Fact of the matter is, I love this woman. I have loved her for nearly ten years. Regardless of what happens starting in one week, three hours, and fifteen minutes as of the writing of this sentence, I will always love her.

And that's enough for this argument.

Side 2: Obsession

Now is where it gets tough. I have to completely ignore everything I wrote in the above argument, and look into the darker parts of my personality.

The fact of the matter is, I have a tendency to obsess. It's always been a problem. My ex wife noticed it right off the bat. I would fixate on something, dedicate a hell of a lot of energy to it, then lose interest and move on to something else. It has been a repeating cycle in my life, and unfortunately, has been a part of my love life, too.

Starting with puberty, I would fixate on a girl, "love" her deeply, then move on to someone else. I can even remember an instance from my youth when, after a falling out with one object of my teenage affections, I willed myself to love another girl. One object of my affections would only fall off when replaced with another.

The fact of the matter is it has been damn near a decade since I have seen her, since we have been together. A third of out lives have passed. We have each been through so much, grown so much, that while the core of our personalities may be the same, that may be all that is. We didn't have the chance to grow together, only to grow separately.

Yes, I am in love with her, there is no doubt about that. And she says she still loves me, has said it many times. But are we in love with each other, or with an image?

I fully admit that she has been my obsession lately. She's constantly on my mind, the first thought in my head when I wake and the last before I sleep.

But unlike my usual obsessions, this one has lasted ten years. Recently, it has burned far more brightly than the little smoldering ember it had been for most of that time, but that's only because it has had far more oxygen to feed off.

Have I really been in love with her all this time? Has it lay semi-dormant in my heart, waiting for the right moment to awaken? Or am I just guilty of idol worship, making her into whatever image pleases me most?

The Verdict:

Who the hell knows? I don't, and won't for another week. I do know that I love this woman more than I ever thought possible, more than any other that has come through my life by tenfold. She's the only one I've ever considered might be my soul mate.

A week from now, I will walk off an airplane. She will see me before I see her. Walking down the stairs and onto the tarmac, I will be nervous, but the jolt I'll feel when, after scanning the crowd, I finally lock eyes on her is unimaginable to me right now. I'll smile, controlling my racing heart and adrenaline, walk up to her, and touch her.

With that touch, everything will be clear.