I remember saying to him one day that calling him my boyfriend didn’t feel right. The term wasn’t accurate enough. Like it downplayed what we really had. I didn’t have the right word then though. He said he felt the same way and that he had already been thinking about the same idea. The best label he could put on me was that I was “his girl.”

It would take us a long time to say out loud that we knew we were soulmates (although, now I feel that that’s not quite it either). We both felt it though and always alluded to it. Like I said, it’s clear now on some level, he knew it first. We were just too scared to voice it. There was always this mysterious hint of something spiritual around us, following us. It was more of an inner knowing than anything else, mixed with some eerie synchronicities that would scare the shit out of you if you didn’t know what was happening. Which happened to be the case with each of us at times.

By the end of the summer, there was a shift…like a creeping, thick wave of fog beginning to swirl around my ankles…and then slowly circling up and around my body…ever so determined, ever so sly. I would imagine snakes in the grass around us. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I spent the next few months with my head cocked to the side in utter confusion.

I was going back to school. The kids were going back to school. Reality jolted us out of Our Universe. The dynamic changed. It had to for the sake of “real” life. Over the next few months, we became more and more disconnected with periodic dips into the pool of our love.

There was one October day we had that was half my favorite and half the opposite. We went for a ride on his motorcycle. It was a beautiful day. We rode around, stopped at a town. Moseyed in the little artsy shops. We got coffee and talked and walked leisurely holding hands. We bought a couple of cigars and rode to a wooded area near a creek where we smoked and laid in the grass. We were looking up at the trees, whose decaying leaves had turned their dependable shades of red, orange, and yellow, with touches of green still holding on…swaying and floating down…on and around us. I inhaled that moment in total fullness. I remember telling him, “I fucking love this. I fucking love you.”

It happened to be the day of a first date between my roommate and his recently ex-roommate. I also had to speak at a meeting that night. We made plans to meet up with our roommates for dinner and drive to the meeting together. I remember my love saying that he didn’t want to do it. That something didn’t feel right. It was going to end badly.

From the very beginning, he didn’t trust my roommate and I didn’t trust his. He felt that there was something about her that wasn’t right. I felt the same.

We met up at my house. As soon as the roommates entered, I knew that my love was right in his intuition. There was an immediate feeling of the swirling of the ever-thickening fog. A bizarre feeling would come over me with this fog. It was confusing and hard to see and sort things out. I didn’t understand this sensation at the time and the oddness of it or what was happening beneath it all.

We all drove together to the restaurant and had a strange and awkward dinner. We were sitting across from them. The exchanges were so odd and uncomfortable, combined with the haze that was holding its ground. It came out during the dinner that both of them were also asked to speak at the very same meeting. Both had said no that they couldn’t, but here they were about to go to the meeting. The way I got sober, this was a whole other layer of disregard for AA, for your sobriety, for the person that asked you.

Betsy had taught me, and others had taught her (and on and on) that you never say no to AA (as long as you can honestly help it). Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life and in order to keep my sobriety, I have to give it away. It’s a basic AA principle that I often only thought of in the context of staying sober. It seems, however, that it applies to all of life (as with many AA principles). We must give of ourselves and help others (though not without boundaries). It was drilled into my head that you do this no matter what. No matter what you feel like doing or what you want to do. You just do it, otherwise you’re a thief…if we don’t look at that aspect of ourselves honestly and change it, we’ll pay a great price.

In my experience this is always true and usually manifests itself in AA as people picking up a drink or a drug again. Which is the ultimate price to pay for an alcoholic/drug addict. I can’t even tell you the number of faces that pass through my mind that have died tragic deaths due to this type of thievery. It’s heartbreaking. I found that the way out required only one thing…seizing the gift of desperation.

I was also taught that if you lie to an alcoholic, you could kill them…my love had gone to the bathroom. It was two minutes max. I was sitting across from the roommates, my eyes squinted, my head cocked to the side the way it did instinctively while in the fog. Something came over me and I said, “You guys are dicks. You’re complete dicks.” I made my case for this statement by mentioning their total disregard for AA and disrespect for sobriety and for the person that asked them to share their stories. His roommate threatened to come across the table at me. I told him to do it. My love returned to the table unsure of what had just happened.

In hindsight, I stand behind the sentiment of what I said, nonetheless, the delivery was wrong on so many levels (something I struggle with regularly). The outcome of this particular day eventually removed each of these people from our lives.

It started to happen that anyone or anything shadowy in our external lives or things there were buried within the depths of ourselves, would come bubbling to the surface…disturbing the taste of the pure, fresh water that was the truest us…acting as sticks stirring and circling and unearthing everything that was to be faced (eventually). If it didn’t serve the highest good of all involved, it had to go.

The sheer murkiness of the water made it impossible to see anything with any clarity. It would become necessary for us to separate in order for the water to settle and to filter the contaminates.

By the end of October, there were a lot of distortions and misunderstandings. We went from talking every day, multiple times a day without fail, to sometimes not talking for days at a time. It was all ego. Nobody really wanted to be the one to give in first. It felt dreadful and baffling. One day he texted me, “What a tragedy…star-crossed lovers.” And it was…a terrific tragedy…I didn’t know what to do. I was feeling more lost with every day that passed…he was slipping away as I started bending further and further. Trying so hard to hang on. Being the one frantically trying to get “us” back. To get back to Our Universe. I was at his house one night during this madness attempting to fix a problem I couldn’t comprehend. I was trying to talk to him, pleading with him to help me to help us. I felt out of control, powerless, confused, and so very hopelessly sad and alone. He looked at me and told me not to look at him with those “love eyes.” I couldn’t recognize the person I was talking to anymore. The man I loved was sitting right in front of me, but nowhere to be found.