Re: nde

That is quite a story. I find it interesting how the NDE in this post goes into great detail about how intensely souls affect each other in life, and here we are, living examples of that. I had a rocky and unusual childhood where I had almost no real mothering, my parents bitterly divorced when I was 4, and a case of polio at 2, after which I was subjected to 4 unnecessary, experimental surgeries that left me at puberty’s door with a limp and only partial use of one foot. Consequently I did not enter adulthood a very confident person, but without out a doubt, this one relationship had more of an effect on me that everything and everyone else put together and multiplied by 10.

I hesitate to tell this story, as people here on CZ can be very judgmental, and this is an extremely tender place in my heart, but here goes:

He left me very suddenly, without warning, in his second year of college after we had been together for about two years. I was devastated. It took me three years to stop thinking about him, even tho I entered another relationship about 1 ½ years later. When that new relationship ended, I “ran away” to California (I grew up in New Jersey), because I could not bear to go back home and face being there without him, where I had many others before ending up spending the rest of my life alone out here.

To make a long story short, 40 years later I started to write a book about my life, and in the process I went over all of my youthful hurts. As I went over each situation the pain would come up, I would cry or whatever, and then get over it, but when I wrote about him, the tears didn’t stop, they kept coming and they got worse as the days passed. It became obvious that while I always knew I had never forgotten him, had not “gotten over” him as I thought I had, I had just buried my feelings deep inside. I agonized over what to do for six months and then I finally wrote him a letter. The purpose of this letter was not to rekindle anything, as I was under the impression that he was a very successful, happily married college professor. I just wanted to know if he had ever really cared for me. (How I happened to have his address is a strange story too.)

He responded by sending me a dozen white, long stemmed roses that arrived in a golden box with the promise of a letter to follow, and when that letter took a month to arrive, I lost hope of it ever coming and I started having crying spells that lasted all night. This is when I began to get a clue that I was in over my head.

The letter came, however, and, in nutshell, in it he told me how he had never been in love with anyone else, how all his life he had told everyone he knew about me, even his wife, and how sorry he was for how he treated me. This letter floored me, as it was so much more than I expected and I had waited a lifetime to hear those words…but there was something wrong. There was an emotional intensity about it that rivaled a little old lady, not a happily married college professor. To make things worse, I sent him my phone number, and when we spoke on the phone …he sounded so different, I honestly thought he was gay! I swear, his voice was high pitched, swishy and raspy. He then sent me…now get this…13 sheets of typing paper, each with an individual letter on it, that when placed together spelled out YOU ARE NOT ALONE, and he scribbled little notes inside the margins of some of the letters that barely made sense. When I saw this, I new there was something going on besides him being gay.

It turned out he was on five antidepressants. In fact, he had been on heavy medication for Depression and anxiety pretty much ever since he left me, including some drugs they sometimes use for cancer. He had retired early due to his mental state, and the fact that he had been throwing up blood due to anxiety and had been living on a generous disability package for the past nine years.

We started writing every week and I sent him all the information I could find about SSRIs, as well as information on how to deal with his problems holistically and as we talked (mostly via the mail, as we live 3000 miles apart) he started making attempts to get off them. He finally complained about his symptoms to his doctors (black outs, fits of rage, chest pain, night sweats, etc.) and when his doctor took him off Paxil, cold turkey, he actually tried to commit suicide. Unfortunately, at the same time he started treating me as if because were writing to each other he was cheating on his wife and his attitude became so one sided that he began to act as if he had to decide between her or me. I swear, that was not the case. I in no way ever tried to get him to leave his wife, …I would never let us come together like that and besides, he could barely make it out the front door, let alone uproot his life over a few letters, but he felt so guilty he discussed my letters with his doctor, and his doctor encouraged him to stop writing to me. I fact, his doctor actually told him that I was the cause of many of his more recent problems, even though he was far more lucid after we had been in touch for awhile then he had been when I found him. So when he left the Paxil behind, he left me behind too, and having him abandon me again, in pretty much the same cold, abrupt way he did 40 years ago, caused me to have a nervous breakdown. I was not only in tears, sometimes for hours, nearly every day for a year and a half but I started having fast, tight palpitations that would last for over an hour at a time and various problems with inflammation.

It has been over two years now since I have heard from him and I have calmed down a lot, but still hurts and I am still struggling to try to get my health and mind back to where it was before this all started. I have no idea if he ever got off the drugs or not, as I was the only one encouraging him too, and he needed all the encouragement he could get, as he had been living that way, non-stop, for at least 20 years. I think of him every day, but he is not gentle on my mind. I guess I will live the rest of my life trying to convince myself that I am not still waiting for another letter.

There have been a number of dreams too, ever since this started, and I not only never dreamed of him before, but I NEVER have dreams with anyone I know in them, let alone a dream that makes any cognitive sense, including one, a year ago, when I suddenly realized he was living in the next house, then the two houses became one, then the adjoining wall began to disintegrate until I could peek through the slats and see him…. Since this dream happened a year after his last letter, I thought maybe it meant the barriers between us were breaking down and he would write again soon, but nothing ever came of it.

I had been doing reasonably well living alone for over 12 years, so how in the world someone I have not seen in 40 years could have such an effect on me is a mystery I will never understand.

Andreas Moritz, who once had a forum here, told me the one who left me died of a broken heart in a past life because I left him, and so now it is my turn to find out how it feels to be without the one I love the most. Perhaps that is so, but I had a past life reading about this with his wife…and she never mentioned such a lifetime!

Or perhaps he is my twin soul, if you believe in such things. I have been told that we have many soul mates, but only one twin soul, and if both parties’ karma is not clear, you will either not meet or it will not work out.

Or maybe I am just a neurotic nutcase who can’t let go of the only person in her life that ever made her feel loved and after 60 years of living, that pain cut a lot deeper then it did at 18.

I don’t know. It’s all very speculative. Unlike many other curezoners who seem to have it all figured out, I don’t have all the answers or any belief systems that are written in stone, and I have heard a lot of metaphysical theories - I have even studied meditation with an enlightened master. It was Rama’s teaching that even enlightened beings don’t know the answers to the mysteries of life and karma. The difference is, they don’t worry about who creates what, they just accept what is as being perfect in the moment.

I think the hardest thing to accept is never having been loved, but I am working on it.