Lifetimes Apart

When I first saw him, I thought he was the one. From across the cafeteria, I recognized his smile. I’d never seen him before, but everything about him was familiar. His eyes reflected all the memories of times we had yet to share. When he walked past me, I chose to follow him, yet to love him, without ever knowing why.

At first, we were inseparable, a yin and yang fused together for a moment in time. We walked Bleecker St. with our fingers linked together, unconcerned by the looming approach of our first year in school. We were Freshmen at NYU, too young to realize we were blessed. At night, I slept beside him, feeling safer than I’d ever felt alone. Briefly, I’d found paradise, but I was too naive to know.

By the time we’d stripped each other of our defenses and our clothes, lying together in the hot Manhattan night, it was too late to turn back or forget. Forgetting might have been easier; forgiveness then was still possible. But I was 18 and in love, and never wise about holding myself back. However, that night I did: I chose not to sleep with him. And that single decision changed everything.

Flash forward one year, and I’m back at home, forlorn. Despite what we’d been through, he has yet to let me go. “Are you ever coming back?” he asks me. “Do you want me to?” I reply. He answers only with questions and silence.

Flash back to our first fight, another hot Manhattan night, and we sat in Washington Square Park together in the darkness. “I’m looking for the one,” he told me, “and I haven’t found her yet.” My heart sinking into blackness, I thank the Universe for not sleeping with him. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. We say goodbye, just weeks after our first hello. Little did I know, I would hear from him again within the hour. “Are you still there?” he would ask me.

Soon he would tell me, he wanted to be friends. Then, as a friend, he would ask me to sleep over. Confused by him, my trust abused by him, I let him draw me back in. But in no time, we would fight again, and I would choose to walk away.

In October, he found me on our dormitory stoop, smoking a clove and glowing from a night of wine. Smiling his familiar smile, he would ask me to teach him to shotgun. “I’ve already shown you,” I would say, before letting the wine win out. Moments later, I was kissing him, sharing the smoke from my clove between our lungs. “I think I forgot already,” he would say afterwards. “Show me again.”

By December, we were no longer speaking. But on my nineteenth birthday, the 10th of the month, he came back to me. We walked through the Village at 3am, smoking a joint and sharing happiness again. It didn’t matter that I had kissed someone else just hours before. Who he’d been with since we’d last parted didn’t cross my mind. We were together again, and however long it lasted, was all I cared about.

The end of December found me on the ground in the cafeteria, drifting in and out of consciousness. Had I passed out while ordering breakfast? It was a seizure, later they told me. Soon, he was by my side, as I stayed in Time’s Square with my father, while getting tested for brain damage at Bellvue. “I meant to bring you flowers,” he told me, “but the store was closed.” We walked through Time’s Square at midnight, taking pictures together. Time’s Square was never as bright alone. That night he slept next to me, little did I know, for the last time. I must have sighed in my sleep, because I woke up to his hand stroking my face. “He cared deeply for you,” I was told four years later. But I didn’t know it then.

For reasons unpoetic, we ceased talking after that. My immaturity took ahold of me, and I tried to create jealousy by seducing his best friend. Though I succeeded, he forgave me, and said goodbye to me at the school year’s end. He didn’t know I wouldn’t be coming back.

A year and a half later, he hadn’t forgotten me. We conversed online late into the night. But for all our talking, we had yet to say anything that mattered. “I remember the first day you walked up to me,” he confessed. Apparently, I was a fantasy come true. But that wasn’t enough for me; I wanted to be more than an adolescent dream. Was there a future for us, or was the past all we had?

I chose to write him a letter that professed my feelings for him at last. I wrote it on stationary, doused it with my perfume, and mailed it off, a thousand hopes sent with it. A year passed without word, I had another boyfriend now. It wasn’t until Fall, three years from the time we’d met, that I finally heard from him. 

For two months, we were talking again. For the first time in years, paradise was once more in sight. Late into the nights, we talked, about everything but how we felt. Finally, I grew frustrated and sometime around Valentine’s Day, I forced our final conversation. I should have known that what doesn’t happen naturally, shouldn’t happen at all.

Looking back, it’s clear I was the instigator. He was a willing soul, but I was the one with a mission. I crafted our relationship in such a way that he believed he was in charge, but truly, I was the force behind everything. Then again, perhaps I give myself too much credit; maybe he could tell all along. 

As was his style, he skirted my questions until he could no longer. “You’re not the one,” he told me at last, “at least not right now.” Though words have supported me all my life, no collection of letters could begin to describe what his words did to me then. Who was he, if not the one I was meant for? If he was not my soulmate, why hadn’t he let me go? Another year would pass before I truly understood.

Sitting across from an intuitive, he was neither the first nor the last thing on my mind. Years of therapy had led up to this. Medication and homeopathy alike had done their best to help me. The truth was, my sadness was deeper than that. My soul had received a blow from which it couldn’t recover. Smiling kindly, she asked me, “What happened in New York?” What hadn’t happened would have been an easier question to answer. I told her I fell in love. In New York, I made a thousand choices, some of which I will never forget. Brows knitted together, eyes closed, she told me she found invalidation in my second and seventh chakras. She asked about the love I had found. I described it briefly, certain no amount of information could help her understand. Yet her reply changed everything for me. 

“This might sound strange to you, but I’m seeing three people in this relationship,” she told me. “You...him...and who you thought he was. But it’s as if you were seeing him from another universe; another life.” Listening intently, not finding it strange at all, I thought of all the times I was told by others that I wasn’t really seeing him. I thought of all his behavior that contradicted who I thought he was. “He did care for you,” she told me, “but the man you saw was no longer him.”

When I first saw him, what I recognized was him from another world, she told me. We had shared an intense relationship in a past lifetime, she explained. “When I first saw him, I thought he was my soulmate,” I told her. “He was your soulmate,” she replied, “in another life.”

“You have to forgive him,” she told me. “You have to forgive yourself. What you saw in him wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t meant to be this time. You need to let that invalidation go.”

Letting go has never been easy for me. Choosing to move on was never one of my strengths. But his is a face I have to leave behind, whatever that means for me. I understand love at first sight now; it isn’t what it’s supposed to be. That instant recognition can mean many things, not just simply that you’re meant for each other. Sometimes, at night, I still remember him, or rather who he used to be. I remember his smile and the way he looked at me. I think about the choices I made, and wonder if I chose right. For better or worse, our karma may well be settled now. Otherwise, perhaps I will see him again one day, in another world, in another lifetime.