I called her home in December of 1992. The last time I actually had seen her was in the summer of 1990. Her mother answered. I asked if she was there, and her mother said she was there. She was taking a shower.
“She’s there?!” I said, as a desperate kind of panic hit me. “Could I leave her a message??” Her mother said that I could. I gave my phone number. “And please, tell her I called. I’ve been trying to contact her for two years now, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. Please tell her I called.” I begged. I was desperate to talk with the girl that I loved. The girl I was in love with. The girl I had always been in love with. The one who made me believe in Soul Mates.
17 years passed.
We ran into each other again, and quickly picked up almost where we had left off. I had never been married, but she had, and she told me that her mother had said something to her on the day of her first marriage. “She told me that one of my old boyfriends had called for me, and she was glad that she had never given me that message.” At the time, she had believed it was me. She said that I was the only person she had dated who would have tried to get in touch with her. And she wasn’t certain why her mother had told her about my message, except maybe as a way of saying she was glad that she was getting married today, and she wouldn’t be getting married today if her mother had mentioned my message. But even as I write those words, it begs this question: if she wouldn’t be getting married today simply because of a phone message… isn’t that phone message more important than this wedding? I told her that her mother had said she was in the shower and would give her the message when she got out of the shower. “I never took a shower there,” she told me. “I wasn’t in that house.” So the way it played out, she never got my message at all. Her mother never delivered it. And her mother led me to believe that the message would be delivered as soon as a shower was over. Except that there was no shower. And there was no girl there taking a shower. So I never got the return phone call. And I was left with the enormous question of what had happened. So many people had told me that I would just have to let it go, because I wasn’t ever going to get an answer. And I tried. I tried so hard to let it go. To let her go. But I simply couldn’t. You can’t let go of your Soul Mate, I guess. No matter how many mothers lie and say that showers are happening when they aren’t, that say they will deliver messages when they don’t, who say that they are glad that they didn’t deliver messages.
I don’t know why the mother never gave the message to the woman who would become my wife. I sometimes find myself getting angry about it all over again. I was hurting for my friend, and I had tried to get in touch with her. And I had begged her mother to help us, and her mother had not only refused to help, but had lied. And that lie lingered for 17 years. I am angry with her. I continue to be angry with her some days, although now it’s mostly wonder and fascination. Why would somebody act like that? What would possess somebody to prevent two people from getting together when they obviously enjoy each other? When they obviously love each other? Why did you act that way? Why do you still act that way?
I don’t know. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s mean. And it’s the way it is.
My wife and I have been married for over 4 years now, and people still tell us that it’s obvious that we like each other. You can see our attraction to each other from across the room. We like hearing that, because we like each other more than we let other people see, and other people see us liking each other from across the room.
I know it’s better to focus on our like, our love, our success story. We were able to follow through on the plans we made when we were kids. We got married. We are married. We are in love. And we’re happy. And yeah, life gets messy. And in spite of the mess that was created around us, we found each other. I’ll focus on that when I feel the shopping cart. My mind has a shopping cart that has a broken wheel, and it pulls my mind to where the past pains live. Even if the shopping cart gets pulled into the gutter where past pains live and gets stuck there…
We. Will. Still. Be. Married.
Best Friends.
Soul Mates.
No matter where the shopping cart takes me.
No comments:
Post a Comment