I met her on the
internet in the middle of
October. She was a
PhD student in
Spanish at
Santa Barbara, a 2.5 hour drive from
Pasadena (if you don't hit traffic, which can add more than an hour to the time). At the time, I already knew that I was going to move from Pasadena to
San Diego at the end of
November.
I had the entire month of November free, as I was taking my accrued vacation days from my old job in one big lump. On the other hand, she was extremely busy finishing up her semester with her own work at school: writing several different papers simultaneously, on top of doing TA work and reading lots of boring books on Linguistics and other fields tangentially related to her field. Because of this, we could only see each other once a week. That meant 6 dates, maximum. It would just be fun.
Of course, we fell in love. The first date I drove up to see her at 4:30 PM, and left to come back at 1:30 AM. The same thing happened on the second date. The other four dates consisted of me driving up to Santa Barbara on Thursday afternoon, bringing her back to stay with me in Pasadena until Saturday morning, then driving her back to Santa Barbara. She would do her work during the day on Friday, but Thursday and Friday nights were (usually) ours to enjoy.
Our last date was three weeks ago. We both had to spend the next week moving into our new places, so we could not meet each other then. San Diego is 5 hours from Santa Barbara. That's too far to drive up and back on a regular basis, not if I want to set up a new life down here. She knew this too.
She gets her degree in a year and a half, and then she has a wealth of opportunities ahead of her. I also have opportunites ahead of me. None of these possible futures can be shared, and we are both too stubborn to give up on our prizes, not after coming so far. So we said good-bye. I don't think I will ever see her again in person.
Was she my soulmate? I haven't been in enough relationships to be sure. I do know that I connected with her more than I've connected with any other woman in a long time. And even though she was crazy sometimes, I am still missing her deeply. There's a phrase that is supposed to be applied to people like us: Two ships, passing in the night. However, I can't identify with that. The two ships are going opposite directions, and are only there for the briefest period of time. Our situation was more analogous to driving along a highway next to a train. You are going the same direction for a while, but sooner or later, one of you is going to stop, or change direction, and your paths will diverge.
San Diego is a big place. I expect to find another woman sometime, but I do not expect to replace her.