The Lovely Lydia's Blog for August 2020

Lydia, have you ever had that one special someone? A soulmate? A person you loved more deeply than anyone else? 

Oh, yes. 

Whilst I've been with many women in my lifetime and given my heart to several of them, there was one I would have devoted my life to, had I had the chance. You may recall in an earlier post that I referred to her as Gina. There will be several aliases here, so hang tight.

For reasons that I don't care to go into here, Gina and I were doomed to be star-crossed lovers. It would never have been possible to have a relationship with her in any normal sense of the word. Nonetheless, we were desperately in love with each other, and we enjoyed a brief but explosive intimate relationship.

External pressures around the relationship brought it all crashing down. Tragically, Gina ended up taking her own life -- not just over our fate, as there were already other pressures in her life. But the stress of our relationship was an additional weight she couldn't carry.

I spiraled into a deep depression. I was torn apart with guilt, and there were very few people I could confide in about the situation. One of them, my current girlfriend, whom I'll call Cathy here once again, attempted to console me. But she'd known Gina, and I had to remove myself from anyone who reminded me of Gina. 

So I ran. I went to Uruguay, letting myself fall into the conforting arms of Gabriela, a beautiful woman with whom I'd had an amazing relationship of more than two years. Gabriela would have stayed with me forever, but I chased a job opportunity and she didn't want to leave her home. When I returned to Gabriela following Gina's death, it fully occurred me how many times I'd fucked up in my life. I could have been forever happy there in Uruguay with this amazing woman. 

But there was no going back, and Gabriela deserved better -- not that she was going to take me back anyway. She was kind and loving to me during my stay, but there was never so much as a hint of rekindling what we'd once had. That ship had long ago sailed. 

So after a time, I went back home to America and tried to put the pieces of my life back together. I found a counsellor to help me achieve some peace, whilst I bounced around from one relationship to another, looking for someone to fill the void. Cathy, my current girlfriend, continued to try to build a closer relationship with me, but I kept pushing her away. And even as I did that, she was kind enough to introduce me to Judy -- someone who didn't have any personal ties to Gina. 

I became intimate with Judy, but I always felt I put more into the relationship than she did. I loved her, but she always felt distant, like her mind was always on something else but me. And it probably was. She had other lovers, whilst for all practical purposes I had only her. 

Yet even as things began to deteriorate between us, I ended up being the sole person who was there for her when she suddenly fell ill. She was a difficult and somewhat troubled person who'd burned quite a few bridges in her life, and that's how I ended up being the only person with her in the hospital room, holding her hand as she died a painful death from pancreatic cancer. 

Her primary-care doctor, Shelley, was the woman who would later become my wife. My older sister, a nurse, introduced the two of us, but it took a long time for a relationship to develop. First I had to go through a couple of very ill-fated relationships that were highly inappropriate and doomed to fail. Then Cathy, the one who'd been trying to get closer to me ever since Gina's death, came back into the picture to try to comfort me. This time I softened and let Cathy in, and we developed a good friendship in addition to an intimate relationship. But Cathy was also seeing other people, and I was in no shape to commit to anything or anybody. 

Meanwhile, my relationship with Shelley took a turn for the romantic. We helped each other so much -- me through my grieving and bad relationship choices, and her as she sorted out her sexuality, after having been married for many years to a man -- that we unexpectedly found ourselves falling in love. 

Long story short, we got married, and I thought I was finally growing up and settling down. But the longer we were together, the more it became clear that we simply weren't compatible with one another. In particular, Shelley still had too many unresolved issues and doubts involving her sexual orientation, and my sex drive was simply too high for her. We thought of creative ways to solve the problem, primarily through opening up our marriage to some trusted friends -- including Cathy, my current girlfriend. But it only made things worse, and our marriage ended. 

That brings me to the present, with Cathy. She goes back with me several years, and she's one of the few people in the world who know all the secrets of the relationship I had with Gina, the dearest love of my life. Cathy has only ever been supportive of me through all the years since, even when I tried my best to push her away. She knows part of my heart will always belong to the one I tragically lost, and yet she loves me anyway. 

It's been a difficult several years, but I feel lucky to have ended up with such a sweet, caring, and beautiful woman as Cathy. She was patient, tender, and kind towards me when few were, even as I kept pushing her away. But she knew she loved me and wanted to be with me, and she went after what she wanted, just as I'd done so many times in my life. It's far more than I deserve, but I thank the heavens that she never gave up on me.