I’ve been corresponding the past few days with MB, my lost soulmate. She’s coming back to town to pick up some detritus she’s had stored here and can now accommodate in her new home she’s just purchased.

We’ve broken each other’s trust and shall never again have what we once had, which was beautiful, brilliant and very deep. I love her still. I believe, without knowing, she still loves me. But, life goes on and some bells can’t be unrung.

She told me she’s read this blog and that I’m “messed up”. I believe her when she says that. I expect it’s EXACTLY what she thinks. Besides, she never quite had the facility to lie.

Most of all, I suspicion that she thinks I’m “messed up” because life DOES go on. She was the most comfortable with her first X husband who never found any woman to please him after her and lives a quiet life in some kind of hunting cabin in the backwoods of Arkansas near Hot Springs. How she could expect that I’d follow that example is beyond me — I don’t hunt or fish and I think it’s camping out when there’s no mint on the pillow. Ah, well.

She tells me that we can talk about anything but what she doesn’t want to talk about. I think it’s funny that she believes she can set the agenda and be in charge of what I’ll bring up and what I won’t discuss. We’ll have dinner when she gets into town Saturday and, in fact, I’ll likely respect most of her wishes as I’ve always done.

And, therein lies the nub of it all.

I respected her and her wishes. I catered to her. I deferred to her. What I finally got for my troubles in that regard is that she took it for granted and felt entitled to my deference and attentions. When, finally, it became a matter of HER compromising what she wanted for the sake of making ME happy … well, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

I guess the universe unfolded as it should, even if it wasn’t the way I wanted it to unfold.

I wonder if it’s unfolding to suit her.

I wonder if there are nights when she thinks that it isn’t so easy to find a man like me. That I’m not so fungible and easily replaced. I wonder how comforting she finds her independence and absolute control over herself when the nights get cold and lonely under grey skies.

I wonder if she misses my companionship as much as I miss hers.

I wonder if there are times when she thinks it wasn’t so unreasonable for me to want to be a first priority for her at least some of the time and to resist being out of her top 20 priorities so often.

I wonder if she sometimes thinks that maybe, just maybe, that at age ____ and twice divorced that a naive and virginal attitude doesn’t quite play out the way it did when she was 20.

MB was and is the nicest, sweetest, kindest woman you could ever want to meet. Part of the charm of our connection was that I was the piquant sauce. I am NOT nice, sweet and kind. In fact, I’m quite the bitch at times and then I’m a revolving door, card carrying, brass plated bastard the rest of the time. We balanced. My “naughtiness” delighted her as long as it was once-removed.

I also balanced her naivete because, as you must know by now, I’m a carnal and passionate man. There was a time when she was delighted by that as well. In the end, not enough.

We shared a spiritual sense that went far beyond religion and it often seemed that the only possible answer for our happiness together was that God had ordained it. We often seemed to love each other beyond all human reason. Oh, the loss. It still hurts after all this time to lose those feelings.

She complained that I’d not written enough about how she’d broken my heart and that it seemed to her that the more recent KW had taken care of that. MB, I never felt you broke my heart nor I yours. I was heartbroken beyond all words, it’s true, but I never really blamed you. Our parting almost broke me. I spun into a depression that was beyond anything else in my life. I wanted to die without you. Literally. No other woman — and there were more than one — was able to replace you nor even to distract me for long. I flopped around and longed for you for months. I woke up morning after morning yearning for you. I went to bed and dreamed of you, no matter who was next to me in the bed. I couldn’t live that way and I couldn’t or wouldn’t just die, although I prayed for that release. So, I’ve gone on. I’ve put together a life without you. There was no other reasonable choice.

And, now, neither you nor I can ever “go home” again.