The One Who Got Away. And I Made Darn Sure He Did.

Someone once asked me if there was one of my former loves with whom I wished I was still sharing my life. I am pretty sure he asked more clearly, but this is the best I can do in my late afternoon sweaty state. Anyhoo, you get the idea: did I regret the proverbial One Who Got Away?

I thought for a short while, did a little inventory in my head, Rolodex style, and gave him a clear no. Nope, no regret at all. Even when the end had hurt, I held no regret.

Edith Piaf would approve.

Today, inspired by a message that showed up in my inbox, I am revisiting my answer.

Yes, one. There is one.

And that one, The One That Got Away, I had very much made sure he did.

It was 1986, and I was in a relationship I had no business being in. Nothing terrible-terrible, just definitely not a match. My best friend at the time had made it clear that she felt I had no business being in that relationship and instead of insisting I leave or telling me why I should she had simply, one afternoon, said to me: “The day you are ready to leave, just call me. No matter what I am doing, I will come over and get you out.”

She must have sensed in me something that I am still grappling with: I don’t leave easily.

Yet, that day came. Quietly, one summer morning, two lines in the middle of the newspaper that had been thrown at our front door did it. They said, “How can I find you if you are still with him?” I don’t remember the context; it seems a little odd in retrospect, but hey, angels come in all kinds of outfits, and this one arrived wrapped in newsprint.

This relationship had been stripped of its life force for a very long time if it had ever had any. There was nothing left to harvest, nothing left to plant. Just the urgent need to walk away before one of us turned to dust.

Still in my PJs, alone in the Seattle apartment that this boy and I shared, I picked up the phone and told my friend, “I am ready.” She responded: “Unlock the door, sit on the couch, and don’t move. I am on my way.” I later learned that she was in the middle of a prestigious fashion shoot and had handed the camera to her assistant long enough to get in her pickup truck and make her way to me.

I was paralyzed. She walked in and asked me to point. I pointed. My clothes, my paints, my toothbrush. When she walked towards a big picture frame above the couch, I shook my head. I did not want him to come home to a sad apartment.

She made a few trips to her truck and then took me by the hand.

She moved me into her huge walk-in closet, up on another hill across the city, where she lived with her husband. She said I could stay there as long as I wanted.

And then she suggested I go on a date with her ex-boyfriend. “He’s great,” she said. “I think you’ll really like him.”

This seemed fast. Had she been planning this all along, I wondered? The ex-boyfriend part? Did she know something I didn’t? Just a few years my senior she used to love reminding me that “When you turn twenty-seven years old, Laura, you will understand things better.”

Well, I did go on a date with her ex-boyfriend. We’ll call him John. And it turned out she was right, he was great. Scary great, in fact.

A bit older than me (and even a tiny bit older than my friend), he was wicked smart - which wasn’t the first, nor the second thing one noticed about the boy I had left. He was funny. The smart-funny kind of funny. He knew stuff I didn’t and I loved that. He was adventurous, the opposite of passive, inventing fun left and right. He gave me a copy of the book Siddartha and even though I kept it for years, it would be a decade before I understood it. He had the sweetest cutest dog and in the big old house he shared with some hippy friends, he introduced me to cardamom. Cardamom always reminds me of him and it’s still my favorite spice. I really, really, really liked him. A lot.

He also seemed to have a lot of women friends, and I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

But he made it very clear that he liked me. A lot. I could see that what he liked was the true me, too. He saw beyond the cute French-bubbly me. He saw me and as a little bit of time passed, he said that he loved me. I believed him. I felt it. It was so very easy and so very good, and I didn’t know what to do with that.

You see, romantic relationships are not where I excel. I know many of the principles, and I have since studied and even taught the principles. I have successfully shared what I know with other couples. It just doesn’t help much when it comes to me.

When the leaves turned red, in the tiny studio I had moved into on yet another Seattle hill, we carved the pumpkins he brought over. He helped me paint the walls mauve, we shared my Murphy bed and there too, it was so easy and so very good.

This scared me. Somehow, I sensed that if I got too close, if I said YES to the question he may not even have known he was asking me, but which I could see in his eyes, I would never leave. And I wanted to leave. I wanted to move to Hawaii, I wanted to be free, I wanted to feel life without someone attached to mine.

I did not know then, and maybe I still don’t, that one can feel free even when tied at the heart and at the hearth with someone intelligent, kind, self-confident, and funny.

I thought maybe I would learn later. I was only 22, I had so much time. Surely I would learn later.

I did not know how rare this was.

When Christmas came, John flew down to Florida and met my family. My grandmother wanted him for herself, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to try. New Year’s that year was special. He gifted me the softest, most beautiful leather jacket.

But I was leaving. I had to. I was flying to Hawaii for an undetermined time and he was generous enough to bless my adventure.

And well, that was that. Upon arrival, Hawaii had me drunk with freedom, with its smells, its colors, and its aloha. Our phone calls got further and further apart. For Valentine’s Day, he got me a gift certificate from a nice local restaurant. I think if I had asked him to join me, he would have.

I didn’t.

A few months later I ran straight into the father of my children and because our three children needed to be born, the pull was strong. I said yes to that road.

It’s likely that I chipped John’s heart, if not broke it a little. My girlfriend didn’t talk to me for fifteen years.

Once in a while, John and I find each other in this big world. Never in person. An email. A message. A couple of phone conversations. He says: “You catch me every so often, my darling!”

Like me, John has had a big life, like me he has loved much and hurt also, played, worked, lived. Like me, he lives out of the US. Like me, I think he is happy.

Maybe, like me, sometimes, he thinks of me as The One Who Got Away.