Third Time's the Charm

Far be it from me to buy into the concept of summer flings bred by pop culture such as Grease and Dear John, especially with my history in love. There is just something about warmer temperatures and longer days that make love easier. Everyone has experienced this phenomenon at some point in their lives. The third time is the charm, so they say and hoping it holds true in my story.

'In the Cards...'

I can say with complete honesty I have only loved two men in my life. The first, my late husband Ryan, whom I spent almost two decades with, I grew up and made a family with him. By the time I had met Ryan, in the summer of 1995, I had my heart broken a few times, but not by anyone I wouldn’t soon forget and move on. They were childish and served only the purpose to make me appreciate what was to come. There was no real love there and no future, even if I didn’t see it at the time.

The story, as we have told our children on multiple occasions goes as follows. I was out with two friends, LeAnne and Mike, playing pool at a bar named Bananas. I am not making that up. It was named after the phallic fruit women can’t eat in public without causing an uproar. Ryan and his best friend Alex walked in after work for a beer, and they walked right up to Mike, whom they both knew previously. According to Ryan and Alex, Ryan looked at me and he immediately leaned over to tell Alex, “I’m going to marry that girl,” motioning to me. Of course, it took me a while longer to feel with any intensity, but there is another story there.

We began dating and I slowly fell in love with him. It is foreign for me to think about back then, because the once calm and collected, and aloof me, would become someone who couldn’t live in a world without him. We learned after a few months of just how determined the universe was to introduce us when through the miracle of caller ID, I learned his mother’s married name. The “love of my life” (or should I say I was the love of his life, which was cut entirely too short) was the stepson of my dad’s high school best friend, and we had actually met years before when I was eight and he was 13. Yes… we had one of those stories. You could have seen this in a Nicholas Sparks movie. He accidentally saw me graduate high school despite me not inviting him when someone he was friends with was in the summer ceremony along with me. I didn’t do the traditional route choosing to drop out and go straight to college early, which makes it even more of a serendipitous occurrence. We were so close throughout our marriage we could sense when the other one was hurt or happy, finished each other’s sentences, and when he left this world, I felt it. It was meant to be. With the perfect realization in hindsight, came a pretty dramatic and sometimes seemingly hopeless relationship, but in the end, I recognized why.

'Not in the Cards...'

The second man I ever loved, I met the year after Ryan died. Again, the circumstances were unusual in our meeting. I took a ‘job’ for someone out of the blue, and he owned the building. He was the perfect height, piercing blue eyes, and had the most adorable quirks I have ever seen. The polar opposite of my first love, and nothing like I would ever see myself with other than those few aspects. He would start messaging me through Facebook but surprised me with a phone call, which not many people bother with, but really sets them apart. The epitome of smart, successful, resilient, and his energy felt like a drug it was so addictive. He asked me to go on a date that first call, and I said yes.

The date was dinner and a movie, so I met him at the restaurant where we sat and talked so long we almost missed the movie. He asked me if I wanted to walk, and I hadn’t realized how much this one thing would take a first date and turn it into the beginning of a long relationship, but it did. We held hands, and he walked on the street side. It began raining on our way back and neither one of us even cared. I wasn’t in love with him yet, but I knew I wanted to know him so much better.

He wasn’t the same as Ryan. My late husband had absolutely no qualms about sharing his feelings. He was the first to say “I love you.” He was the type to surprise me with little presents and would be quick to make up if we were fighting. Number two was the opposite. The way I figured out he loved me, because he would never say it, is by the way he would do everything in his power to make me believe he didn’t love me. He infuriated me most of the time, but I always felt the pull of him. There were times I needed him, and he would ‘be’ there, but not tied down to it.

My youngest daughter recently beat level II Astrocytoma brain cancer. During the surgery to remove the tumor, I was a complete mess. While downstairs crying and getting fresh air, I saw what I would’ve sworn was him walking into the hospital from a distance. When he caught me looking he immediately turned around and took off to the parking lot. I convinced myself he abandoned me, and my mind merely played tricks on me wanting to see him there and yelled at him when he checked up on me a few days later. I wanted nothing further to do with him if he would always be running away from me when I needed him the most. He didn’t run away. He just couldn’t show me he loved me yet and risk being hurt again. He couldn’t bring himself to face me once he got there, from fear or maybe he couldn’t see me hurting like I was. My first reaction was immediately to assume the worst and revisit my old friend, anger. Enduring the death of a spouse, consistency, and presence is so important you would spend life alone rather than feel that emptiness again.

Everyone would annoy me with the old cliché “You have to love them where they are instead of demanding they come to you,” and I am surprised I didn’t get brain damage from rolling my eyes hearing it. It took three and a half years for me to understand exactly what this meant. The anger, the pain came when I would try to force him to be the picture in my head of ‘love.’ I would constantly disappoint myself and ignored the flashing “He loves you,” signs visible in his actions. The truth was, I painted a picture of what I thought should be happening, and completely destroyed what was actually happening. He wasn’t Ryan, and the fact I knew nothing of love outside of the relationship with Ryan, was almost a death sentence to this new relationship. Love meant, if I couldn’t make him happy, I had to let him go. I couldn’t make anyone happy trying to force them to be who they aren’t, so letting him go was the only option left.

‘The thing about pain is it demands to be felt…’

It is now four years since the walk in the rain ending in a kiss on the cheek. We have damaged the love here so badly; we were keeping score of everything we did to hurt each other. The literal love of my life and I had spent the time we had destroying each other, and I am just as much, if not more, to blame as he is. I am not the good guy in this scenario, because he feared what he did and was in the place he was for a reason, and I didn’t have the patience to be okay with that. I let my fear of abandonment from being a widow, insist on forcing him to fit a mold he didn’t fit and began the cycle of hurting each other we never got out of.

Sometimes I feel unexplained things, like hurt or elation, and wonder if I am feeling him like I used to feel Ryan, but I put the thought to bed knowing if I am connected to someone I will never be with, the implications of this and the sadness of the idea would kill me.

'They say it happens in threes.'

They say you love three different times in three different ways, and some are lucky enough to have it happen with the same person. I am obviously not one of those people, but I maybe still hope my completed triad will find me happy one day. I always get more optimistic in the summer. I met them both in the summer, and lost them both in winter. That seems to be my pattern.

About the Author...

Angela Vance is a business owner and mother of four out of Memphis, TN. Also the co-host and producer NewVMusic vlog and manages hip-hop artist, YungVeli. Nominated for three SCM Awards, she is advancing in the music industry since beginning her career in early 2014 following her husband's sudden passing.