Love is an Abyss...

I used to believe in soulmates.

Honestly, deep in my bones, I believed that there was one person in the world that was created as basically my other half, the person that would bring out all of my best qualities and make me a more interesting person.

I called him Joe Garbarini.

Joe Garbarini was, of course, a character in a book that I read my freshman year of high school. He was a cool, motorcycle riding, Shakespeare loving, Catholic Italian boy, who naturally fought all the time with Debbie Lesley, the spoiled, rich girl whose parents divorce necessitated her becoming a waitress at the restaurant that Joe's family owned, The Heartbreak Cafe. Never fear-all of the verbal sparring was merely foreplay for the genuine feelings of love that Joe and Debbie discover for each other by the end of the six-book series.

Naturally, I am Debbie. Especially when I was a geeky 15 year old who hadn't quite grown into my nose (I know, I still really haven't grown into my nose).


In any case, Joe Garbarini held my heart for 6 years while I waited for whoever it was that my soulmate was going to turn out to be. For a dorky, shy girl who desperately wanted to fall in love but who had not the slightest clue how to actually go about making that happen, making up a romance in my head was as good as it was going to get.

In reality, I'm still pretty head over heels for Joe.

This is where all of my blog posts tend to delve into the shattered pieces of my marriage and how I haven't the foggiest idea how to move away from that person that I used to be crazy in love with. But that's not exactly where this one is going to go.

No, this blog post is actually about The Time Traveler's Wife, which is my favorite book that I have read as an adult. The main plot of the novel is that Clare has known her husband, Henry, basically her entire life, as he is a time traveler and has appeared to her since childhood. When Clare finally meets Henry in real life, he is this young, twenty-something boy pining over a lost love.

The plot obviously goes in many different directions than just that, but the reason that I love it is for that single point alone: she has been in love with this man her entire life, and when she meets him, he is not the man that she loves. She has to wait for him to grow into the man that she adores. She has to patiently bide her time while he grieves the loss of another love. And he is constantly leaving her, not because he wants to, but because that is the hand that fate has dealt him.

It's really no wonder that this resonated so deeply with me, reading it for the first time while my husband was deployed to Iraq, a 23 year old boy at the time, me a 24 year old military wife, thrust into a life of decisions I was ill equipped to make, buying a house all on my own, trying mightily to pretend that I wasn't scared out of my mind for a million different reasons.

I've thought a lot about that girl-that 23 year old girl who knew nothing what she was doing but who had grasped onto the idea that Nick was her soulmate, and that was her lifeline-everything else could fall to bits but she knew to the depths of her soul that Nick's jagged edges fit inside of her broken pieces and so everything would be okay.

Honestly, when you begin your marriage there, is it any wonder I fell so far apart at the end of it?

I carry these girls inside of me still-the 15 year old me with the pretend boyfriend, the 23 year old newlywed, the abandoned 36 year old woman-and I wonder what that idea of a soulmate even means.

What I do know, what I was telling myself the other day when I finished a book that reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife and therefore started my mind down this particular rabbit hole-I know that one of the best things about who I am now is that I have no expectations of that. Falling in love-as all encompassing and amazing and wonderful as it is-is only one small part of what it is to be someone's soulmate. In truth, it's about understanding that someone is coming into your life with all their own baggage and experiences and hurts and joys, and perhaps, they will provide solace for your own hurts and joys.

It's nothing and everything more than that.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
-The Origin of Love