A Karmic Meal

There was a time I was startled by the way love can brew. The way it cooks up in your heart. Like a stew with meat, carrots, onions, and chunks of potato and a just-right, clinging, and thick gravy. The rich brown gravy coats everything. It’s what we drag our warm crusty bread through not to miss a swirl at the bottom of the bowl. It makes us smack our lips, contemplating seconds. I had that once. He was rich with life and love, and his brown warmth coated everything until it didn’t.

It didn’t because I wasn’t selfish enough, but he was. It didn’t because we lived eight hours apart. Those miles and that time were daunting for him, but not for me. I traveled it to see him, but it wasn’t enough.

I knew immediately that what we had spanned lifetimes, and this was our chance in this one to finally make it right. Fix the karmic debt of our past and love one another with complete abandon as we did when we were together.

I was his “baby girl,” and he was my “big daddy.” Silly, but touching, sentimental, and stirring.

Up to that point, the steam was hot enough to burn, and the intensity could pour through the phone screens. Quickly “love you” got the “I” and was transformed though it was only blurted out suddenly because of his desperation to cling to me while also trying to turn away. What a problem for him, but not for me. Love is love is love. I can love from a distance or proximity. I will make it work and make things happen if I’m shown the love that makes it all worthwhile.

We could talk for hours, literal hours, and fall asleep on the phone. I listened to him snore on the other end and dreamed we were next to one another. Close enough to feel his warmth and his hand reach for mine while sleeping deeply.

I was convinced we were going to make it work when he suddenly got divorced. It gave me the courage to do the same. After weeks of silence on and off as he navigated the trials of separating a household and ending a relationship of some 20 years, he’d come back. He’d tell me how he’d missed me and never stopped thinking of me and how he didn’t want to give me up.

I believed him. I believed him when he said he wanted me there with him. I reminded him he still had to work on his “my time.” He agreed, but with such exuberance and excitement for our future, we talked and shared feelings and desires and ourselves openly and freely with one another all the time. He told all his friends about me and showed my picture. One of his friends said to him I looked like the type he’d marry, and he agreed. My heart soared at the prospect of it all. I checked in with him about these things often, so I was sure all was well.

Then in mid-conversation one night he just stopped talking. No matter what I said over the next weeks, he didn’t reply. I was so worried that something had happened. I wrung my hands; I cried, I searched for news announcements in his town. I heard nothing. Finally, one day, he replied that his circumstances had changed. He said it was work, but he wouldn’t be able to be available to me like he had been. He was aloof and withdrawn. I checked in again some weeks later and got a reply that we were good; he was just not available right then to talk.

After some more time passed I messaged him again and told him I was leaving for a writer’s conference I was very excited about and then he dumped it all on me…he’d moved to the Midwest from the coast he loved so much. He worked there now and had a girlfriend. He’d wished me luck at the conference but said that once again he didn’t have time to go into details.

So, he’d left me. He’d left me behind in the dust of his jeep, or truck, or motorcycle who knows. God knows, I don’t. I cried the night away before my trip and wept for him every day while I was there. I’ve never heard from him again. I still think of him every single solitary day.

I still cry often, as often as I am right now writing this. I was discarded just as he said he’d never do. I wasn’t chosen, I don’t know now if I was ever even really loved. It is a pain that is almost too hard to bear when I take it out and look at it all.

The recipe for our romance had all the perfect ingredients, but the two most important ones were he and I. Together we blended the right amount of spice, flavor, and tenderness to make a dish neither of us could get enough of. Then, there it was, he’d had his fill and pushed away from the table. Wiping his mouth, he laid his napkin down and walked away without considering the mess he left behind. There was still plenty of delicious gravy waiting in the bottom of his bowl. If he’d just torn off another piece of bread and swiped through it, it might just have changed his mind. Instead, he left the debris that I had to wade through while trying to hold my heart up high enough to safely navigate it and free myself from his disregard.