The Mirage and the Mirror: What Happened When I Loved the Soul and Not the Man

I. The One Who Got Away

When two soulmates walk into a building from opposite ends, they can’t help but find each other. Not ten years, not ten thousand miles can keep them apart. Especially not if, the first time they met, their lessons together weren’t complete.

One February 2nd — Groundhog Day — I woke to a text on my work phone. I wonder if you remember my birthday is in March. I fumbled for my glasses, my pulse quickening. The area code was his. Could it really be him — my “one who got away” and the man I had wished for a decade would find me again?

The truth is I’d sabotaged us. Back then, I was addicted to the chase, reenacting a wound etched into my psyche in early childhood: the ache of not being chosen. Once I had him, my interest waned. And when I lost him, regret remained — as if I’d been chasing the curve of a rainbow, dazzling from a distance but dissolving when I reached for it.

I returned to the places that still carried his imprint: the Buddhist temple where I smiled impishly at him during walking meditation to try to make him laugh; the western banks along the Schuylkill River where we stayed after midnight, trading stories as the water drifted drowsily beside us; the square where we sat in the grass, drinking cup after cup of coffee until we could’ve rocketed to the stars.

He surprised me one weekend with a trip to the Jersey Shore, not knowing that since childhood I’d hated sand and feared the waves. We arrived just as a storm rolled in. Rain poured. Lightning cracked. I screamed with delight, running into it with him, my restraint washed away by laughter. We ducked under a pagoda, drenched and delirious, splitting pepperoni pizza seasoned with salty raindrops.

The next morning, we spread our towels across the beach, reading to each other until he beckoned me toward the water. I shook my head, but he smiled and took my hand. “I won’t let anything bad happen,” he promised. And he didn’t. For one of the few times in my life, I felt truly secure with someone — safe enough to step into the wild. And once I did, the ocean took over. She awakened untamed joy and freedom I hadn’t known ’til then. That day, I let in two loves: him and the Atlantic Ocean.

For the next ten years, I returned to the Atlantic again and again. She became my witness through breakups, illness, and despair. I told myself it was only the ocean’s medicine that carried me through, but that wasn’t the whole story. Each time I sat with her, I could feel him beside me too. I kept reliving our days there together. That’s why I called the ocean one of the great loves of my life — she held me, but she held his echo too.

He’d been my supervisor once, and I admired him; he was smart, steady, capable. In groups, he carried the same presence. When he spoke, people leaned in, lulled by the ease and assurance he carried. I wasn’t the only one who admired him.

He was as deep a feeler as I, and he could meet me in my emotions without wavering. Our conversations were never shallow; there was always something to process, to turn over together. I could tell him anything, and he seemed not only to understand but to admire the way I worked through things — how I let myself fall, honored the weight of my feelings, and then slowly rose again. With him, my depth wasn’t too much; it was met, mirrored, and even cherished.

Prior to our fling, he’d saved me — or so I thought. I was drowning in heartbreak, numbing myself with alcohol, overdoing it at parties. He was the one who convinced me to try Alcoholics Anonymous, even after I told him I couldn’t believe in the Christian higher power. Your higher power can be anything, he said. Science. Nature. Love itself.

I respected him enough to try. And when I began 12 Step work, I described my higher power as witty, fun, and protective — like him. I wasn’t making him God, but using him as a mirror for the kind of divinity I was finally ready to believe in. And strangely, it worked. I broke up with the tyrannical God of my youth and welcomed a presence that was tender and compassionate. We called it H.P. for short.

When I was with him, I believed nothing bad could happen. He showed up when I had to move suddenly from my apartment. He coached me before intimidating conversations. He shared my excitement about school. And he encouraged my silliness — firing back during ice fights, sneaking into a national park after dark, giggling when the police caught us. He called me Mischief, and I felt seen and appreciated for the part of me that wanted to play.

But then the emotionally unavailable ex resurfaced, showering me with attention, dangling the validation I still craved. My ego was starving. I had already won the man who felt like home; my hunger demanded a new chase.

He was devastated but walked away, self-respecting and silent. And almost instantly, I knew I’d made a mistake. I grieved like the city itself was haunted — walking streets that held his ghost, aching for my kindred spirit. I turned to H.P. — the very God I had shaped in his image — for consolation. Every man who came after him tasted flat, like a recipe missing spice.

We traded emails, tried to untangle what had gone wrong. I even called him once, begging for another chance. He told me he’d always love me, but he’d committed to someone new — the woman he’d later marry.

So I let him go — at least physically — but in my imagination, I kept him close. I pictured him in the passenger seat, singing as I drove. I set up an extra rocking chair on my porch and, from time to time, poured out my heart. I guessed his replies. It was like praying to a spirit guide. I comforted myself with the belief that we were soulmates, destined to reunite in the afterlife.

In the ten years we were apart, I devoted myself to digging deep. I doubled down on therapy, peeling back the patterns that kept me pursuing rather than receiving love. I thought if I could repair that psychological wound, I might one day be ready for a partnership like we’d almost had.

So when his message arrived ten years later, it felt like fate, the universe gracing me with a second chance with this man who could make standing in line at the DMV the time of my life.

II. Dizzy With Desire

So of course I remembered his birthday. My reply was immediate: March 13th. His answer confirmed what my heart already knew: it was him. From that moment, I was swept into a current I could neither resist nor slow. In the weeks that followed, we rediscovered each other through long, tumbling messages that read like a cotton-candied romance novel. He also told me he was legally separated from his wife, that she moved down the street, and that he now had a daughter. He was waiting for his finances to align so that he could pursue a divorce.

I was elated, dizzy with desire. I called him my dream-come-true. He told me I was proof he could once again believe in magic. There was just one complication: he’d relapsed on drugs and alcohol while he was married. He’d gotten hooked on weed to manage pain after surgery, and that led to a slow slide back into booze. He portrayed his wife as cold, cruel, and controlling. And she’s the one who’d handed him the drink. But he was back in recovery, only months from his one-year anniversary.

A neighbor in AA, a psychic and wise elder, urged: Give him two years before giving him another chance. But I wrote off his warning. The man I remembered, the one I had prayed for a decade to return to me, could never really relapse. That was the story I told myself. The way I saw it, she was the poison, and I was the antidote.

For almost two years, I lived inside a mirage. I’d carried a secret bucket list of moments I wanted to share with him, and now we were checking them off. On Memorial Day, we danced on my deck like two kids at prom. We rode the Ferris wheel at a summer carnival, holding hands like teenagers. We learned to disco dance to YouTube videos. And at the top of that list: we made the two-hour pilgrimage back to the Jersey Shore, as an act of devotion to the water priestess we joked had pronounced us Mr. and Mrs. Mischief.

And then there was the car ride. We were driving back from lunch when a frothy pop song came on. He knew every single word to the girly ballad. He belted it out with unashamed gusto, grinning, alive, utterly unselfconscious. I watched him and thought, This is it. This is the man I’ll marry.

III. Codependence Dressed Up As Devotion

Give yourself at least six months to see not only a person’s light but their darkness. Otherwise, you fall for the reflection before you see the person standing in front of you. This time, it didn’t take that long. I’m sure he could say the same thing.

From the start of our reunion, there was so much shimmer — his wit, his song, the way he could make every day feel like a holiday. But as months stretched into years — nearly two of them, from one Groundhog Day to two New Year’s Eves later — the gleam wavered, like heat bending the air until what’s solid comes into view.

What he called curation looked more like compulsion, boxes and shelves crowded with comic books, toys, and superhero figurines, even cereal boxes from youth, the raunchy reek of fast food and cigars clinging to his clothes and cheek, and the suspicious walks through the woods or quick drives to the corner store during important phone calls that never quite added up.

Here’s where I made my mistake: instead of taking in the whole picture and admitting it didn’t fit, I told myself I was being too critical. I smoothed the edges, carried what he dropped, and waited for the man I imagined to finally arrive. I confused boyish with good, impulse with aliveness. The more I mothered him — with pep talks, rewriting his résumé, laundering his clothes — the less I could desire him. Romance wilts under caretaking, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

I see now I hadn’t accepted the whole person. I was infatuated with his potential — the soul stripped of its shadow, with the man he’d become if only I believed in him hard enough. Even as the red flags started popping up like a game of whack-a-mole, I stayed, insisting that the altar I’d built was too holy to sacrifice. The longer I clung, the further I drifted from myself. And, trust me: a man can feel when he’s desired for who you want him to be instead of who he really is. If he doesn’t leave, resentment takes root. Illusions crack.

The most disturbing reality check came the week my cat died. More than ever, I needed his steadiness. But when he arrived hours late, his eyes were too bright, his humor jagged, and his sweat rancid. He’d used cocaine. “Don’t you want to know all of me?” he asked, framing intimacy like a dare. My head knew to refuse; my heart couldn’t bear the grief. So I forgave him, and in that gap, I betrayed myself.

I couldn’t settle. My body lived on edge, scanning for signs the way a bird watches the sky for hawks. I tracked his every mood and move — his frequent sweets binges, the pants he forgot to zip, the new stains on his unkempt clothes. Each detail became evidence in a case I didn’t want to admit I was building. And he likely felt it too, my vigilance circling like a dark cloud above him. Under that kind of sky, he soon disappeared.

Daily calls dissolved into silence. Panic rose within me like tidewater. This time, I hired a psychic. She saw him possessed by spirits — and not the dry see-through kind — in an all-night bar. When he resurfaced, he was belligerent, brittle, half-present. Then gone again. Next, he was in rehab. “Don’t forget me,” he pleaded. And I didn’t. I still clung to the dream, even as reality slipped further away.

By New Year’s Eve of our second year, truth crashed our holiday reverie. My attraction was gone, eroded under the weight of caretaking and lies. I named his lack of self-care as the reason I’d withdrawn my affection — kinder than admitting I could no longer pretend. He ended it, and I let him, relieved not to be the one to cut the rope.

Then came the call from his mother. Her voice spilled out fast, as if she couldn’t contain the flood of her own anxiety. He’d relapsed again and she asked for advice. And then, as if thinking out loud, she blurted, “I like you, but I didn’t raise him to commit adultery.”

My heart catapulted into my gut. Adultery? He had told me he was legally separated, even divorced less than a year later. She replied flatly, “There’s no such thing in this state.” Later, I found out the full truth. He’d never divorced either.

In that moment, the mirage evaporated. His ex’s house down the street, the boxes of toys, the timelines and excuses — they disintegrated like sand castles at high tide. I hadn’t been in love with a man so much as a projection, a draft, a future tense. And he hadn’t been in love with me, not really. He’d attached to a version of me who didn’t ask hard questions, who shouldered his shadow without complaint.

IV. Looking Into the Mirror

Two summers later I returned to the ocean where I’d first felt raw exhilaration in his hands and where I’d gone for solace during our years apart. Rainbow umbrellas dotted the sand, bright against the endless meeting of sky and sea. Looking at the horizon I felt the mix the water always brings me: a quiet contentment that slows the mainland’s restless pulse and nostalgia for what’s been lost. This time, grief rose too — building like a wave offshore — the kind you see forming, cresting, and know will soon crash. This time, I didn’t freeze. I dove to the bottom.

No one on shore could see me sobbing between waves, so I let go. Water slammed into the places I’d braced, the sorrow I’d hidden. I offered it to her — all of it. I gasped, dove deeper, gathered the grief where it had lodged. I howled, kicked, fell. I was tossed, lifted, and tossed again. Then I let her take it — him, the fantasy, the years. When I rose I was raw. I staggered back to my chair and lay still until the beach emptied for dinner.

For years I’d come here to keep him alive inside me. That day I felt the ocean had been holding me all along — and I let her. She witnessed my death and rebirth. As the sun slipped toward the horizon, I walked near the water’s edge and whispered a prayer: May he be well. I forgive him for what he could not give. I forgive myself for staying too long. May I see what is, and honor it.

I bent to collect a few seashells and stones, each one a fragment the ocean left behind: boundaries, clarity, and devotion. I carried them home not for an altar to him but to myself — to the woman who had entered the water, faced the wave, and chosen her own devotion at last.

I could finally see: we hadn’t picked up where we left off. We’d picked up where our fantasies had parked us. He loved the fantasy of me, and I loved the soul that hadn’t fully landed on human feet. We were both drinking from a heat-mirage and calling it honey.

Now when I walk the shore I listen for the low notes: foam fizzing at my ankles, sand resettling after the pull, breath between waves. I am learning to love in that register — eyes open, feet grounded, no ghosts in the passenger seat. If a man arrives, he will meet me — not the mother, not the wish, but the woman who knows the difference between the mirage and the mirror, and who chooses the mirror, even when it asks more of her.

When the waves receded one last time before I turned to find my car, he slipped from me — dream into sea foam.