Echoes of Her

A husband admits his heart never got over an old flame despite being married for decades.

It’s been more than 20 years. I’m a husband, a father, a man with a life that many would describe as full and for the most part, it is. I’ve built something meaningful with my wife. We’ve raised children, shared milestones, held each other during storms. Our bond is solid, shaped by time, tested by life, and deepened by love.

But there is something that I don't usually speak about, something that has lain quiet in the back of my heart.

I still love someone else.

Not in a way that detracts from my marriage, but in a way that is impossible to put into words. It's the kind of love that lies hidden away, untouched by the passing of time ever ready, always ready in the quiet.

She was my first love. We were both young, carefree, and completely absorbed in each other. She was a woman who could illuminate the world around her. However, fate had other plans. I went to the city for employment purposes, believing that our love could overcome distance. However, weeks became months, then months again, and unknowingly, we let each other go.

We never broke up. We simply broke out of time.

Time passed. We both married, had children, and started our own lives. I lost all hope of ever hearing from her again.

And then, quite out of the blue, she addressed me one day. It was simple to begin with she wished to reintroduce me to her father, someone I had known as a child. But having opened the door, the emotions flooded in. To talk to her was to leaf through an old album of photographs, but every snap breathed life.

She confessed to still thinking about me. Every day. That there was a part of her heart that never ceased loving me. And I knew I felt the same thing.

It wasn't nostalgia. It was something else. Something real.

But this is the twist she's happy. She's married. She has kids. And so do I. We're both good, stable with people we love and who love us back.

So we made a choice: to stay quiet once more. Not that we wanted to, but because we knew we ought to. Love, when it is genuine, does not always mean hanging on. Sometimes it means letting go once more.

And I have to be honest on one thing my wife is part of all this.

She knows the lady before her. To know that our meeting was short but genuine. And most of all, she knows where my allegiance lies. Never questioned me. Never threatened. That is a comfort when two individuals really know one another.

I love my wife not with youth's passion, but with the richness of something tried, something won. I wake up in the morning knowing she's the one I want to grow old with. She is the anchor of my life.

And still, I've discovered that the heart isn't always neat. It doesn't always erase the slate, even when the here and now is beautiful.

So what do I do with this old love? I carry it. In a way that isn't necessary to vocalize. I don't allow it to destroy my life, but I'm not going to lie about the fact that it did happen. It made me. It taught me to love, to lose, to become something more.

I'm not ashamed of it.

I'm human.

And maybe that is what all of this is about not having to make a choice between one love and another, but learning to be with both. One who built my history, and one who is building my future.