Piecing the missing years.

 Thursday night I had another 3+ hour phone call with Erik, from midnight to 3am. This time I couldn't hide in the closet to talk because Little O would hear me and wake up and cry, so I decided to drive my car out and park on the street to talk in my car. My car these days is the only personal space I can have in my life; I even have my therapy sessions in my car.

At the beginning of the phone call, Eric said, "I have to tell you this upfront. If you find me distancing from you, it's not because I want to. It's because I'm afraid things are overheating between us and you would stop talking to me. I never want to lose you in my life." I said, "thank you for telling me this. That feels really sweet." At one point I also said, "I guess it was a good thing that we never got sexual." He said, "it was a good thing." Then we talked about everything from the Brutalist, subtle interactions and emotions in that movie, polyamory and group sex, my love life, mental health, life structures, porn and misogyny and even some lesbian tendencies I had as a child. At the end of our conversation, he said to me, "remember what I told you at the start of our phone call." I said, "I already forgot about it. I need you to say it again to me." And he did. Then I said, "I'm gonna forget it again and I'll need you to say it again in the future." He said, "OK". 

He told me the time he was in Tokyo it was the only time in his life where his level of happiness was higher than the level of pain. He was in Tokyo from 2013 to 2017, and then he moved to Korea. Ever since 2017 his life has always been more painful than happy. I told him that felt really sad and he should be working with a therapist about that. Starting 2017 he started to do polyamory, and he got married in 2021 because the social isolation was giving him so much anxiety that his wife was the only person he could talk to in person for years so he decided to get married like that. I remember that he told me he didn't even register his marriage in the US, whereas I did. When he got married he had an open marriage but now it's not. His wife checks his phone so he often has to delete messages with me and I always ask him to delete photos and videos of me (actually I've only sent him one photo and one video of myself doing karaoke) and we have never even talked on FaceTime.

He also told me that he hasn't had alcohol for 5 years. He spends a lot of time reading psychology and relationship books, which is why I ended up reading Gottman's Science of Trust. I think he's really trying to get out of his pain and be more healthy, but he does it in an intellectual and scientific way, i.e. based on aggregate data that might necessarily be directly applicable to who he is as a unique individual. The strange thing is to see what life has done to us in 12 years. When we met in 2012, we were young; I was 26 and he was 30. He was in a 6-year relationship and I was in some entanglement with Ken. He and his boss were the last business meeting I had that day at the conference. After our meeting, he wanted to buy me a drink and somehow I was brutally honest in that conversation. I told him that I had a skill of reading people and that I could see that he was feeling insecure. That evening, maybe at around 10pm, he called me and told me to come down from my hotel room because he was standing right outside. I told him no, because I was exhausted that night and since we both lived in the City of Gold, we could always hang out when we got back. He said no, it had to be then. I asked him why and he couldn't give me answer, so I asked him, "is it because you have a girlfriend in the City of Gold?" He laughed a bit and didn't answer, so I said, "I'm looking for something serious and we can talk when we get back." So that night, I never went downstairs to meet him outside of my hotel. Also that day in January 2013, when he took me to the beach for one day gave me so much happiness at the lowest point of my life, when I had to leave the City of Gold, forced by life. We were so naive back then and 12 years of various traumas brought us here again in 2025. Why did the universe play our lives like this?

After he told me that he had been living with more pain than happiness, he told me that he felt just happy talking to me and that he needed this conversation. At the end of our conversation, he said, "you know you can initiate too." I laughed and said, "omg you're still paying attention to that?" He said, "I notice it even without paying attention!" I said, "well when you initiate, it makes me smile." He said, "then who makes me smile?" I said, "but I do initiate and send you pictures. You know when I see some things in my life I think of you and then I send you a picture." He said, "ok yes you do initiate sometimes."

Does the universe really exist? Does it really have a plan and does it really have a message for us? Why are our lives so messed up like this and why are we reconnecting so strongly when both of our lives are so messed up, again? When we met in 2012 our lives were so messed up and now again in 2025 it's still the same hot mess for us. I guess the blessing in disguise is that we saw each other's heart 12 years ago before we each had to enter a traumatizing, messy life and we still remember what we saw back then and remember how we felt back then. The downside of that is we're now in some kind of limbo, faced with midlife crises, unsure who our real selves are--the naive, hopeful self in 2013 or the traumatized, jaded self in 2025?

Does the universe have an answer to this? Does it really want us to figure that out on our own? Does the universe know that most humans out there can't really figure that out and they're just living their life by the day, repeating the same thing, not feeling or questioning their inner self. 

It's like what Eric said, "I'm at a crossroads in many ways in my life. Where I go next isn't straightforward; in fact all the straightforward paths seem to have been exhausted. To advance, I need to either discover something new both in the world and in myself, or recover something that I previously had but is now lost or forgotten. When we chat, it unlocks things for me."

I replied, "I'm very happy to hear that. One question tho--why do I always show up when you're at some crossroads in your life lol". He said, "Haha you missed my 2017 crossroads and my pandemic crossroads. You're late!" I said, "lol true. That was a question for the universe not you."

In another conversation, we also puzzled 2017 and the pandemic together. In 2017 I was pregnant with Little O and in 2020 I was pregnant with 2020. My life was completely occupied by my babies and having a baby during the pandemic was stressful, although it definitely alleviate the social isolation.

What exactly is the universe's plan?