The other day I found a picture of my ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend in a Google search in which I ended up with more information than I bargained for (strange how much lack of privacy there is on the internet regardless of privacy settings). In one link, I clicked on his name until I found his “Hangout” page–an instant message board connected to his list of community contacts--and the picture of the only woman he was “hanging out with.”
He hadn’t changed: he still lived in Scandinavia and entertained love from faraway, on the computer that is and this time in Brazil. Even his mode operandi was similar: after meeting me on an international dating site we "hung out" on an instant message board for six months before meeting in Amsterdam. After meeting in real time, I fell in love, but he didn’t, or at least I thought he didn’t. Eventually, I got over him but occasionally felt the pang of his loss, Googling him every so often.
What was surprising about my former lover’s new girl was how much she looked like me: blown-out, straight, dark hair, prominent nose, almond-shaped brown eyes, and full lips. My exuberance, innocence, and reticence, as he described it, evident in her coy smile. "Oh my god," I thought, "she was me." I stared confounded by the similarities. Clicked on her profile and learned that, like me she was a college instructor who taught American Literature; like me, she was a film buff; like me, she had two grown children, a blonde daughter and brown-haired son. What was he up to?
At first, I was thrilled by her resemblance and similar bio; I hoped he suffered my loss as much as I had suffered his. But then I realized I had been the ghost of the woman he loved before he met me, even though I was not a blue-eyed, red-headed Scandinavian woman; we did, though, share a sense of passion, ambition, and innate understanding for the man we loved. In Amsterdam, he tried to relive her memories through me. At the bar, he started a fight with another man the way his ex-girlfriend once did to incite his passions, and in bed he called out her name.
This haunting of past lovers was familiar to me: After our divorce, my ex-husband dated women with my smile, hair, eyes. Our friends marveled at the similarities. "It's you, Barbara," they said. I realized later that my ex-husband’s girlfriends’ striking resemblances to me was correlated to his guilt of cheating on me and our difficult relationship ending, which I worked through for several years to become his friend once again. Interestingly enough, my ex-husband never haunted me in the men I dated.
Even more strange was that my ex-husband's new girlfriend had been the spitting image of Priscilla, the first girl he loved, who danced a mean Prince and who his mother rejected because she was "too dark and too wild" (this went beyond being a type for him because there were no physical similarities between me and his first love). I never mentioned the similarities between his first love and the woman from his affair, who was also dark, wild, and danced a mean Prince; I thought it was obvious. It was just as obvious he never forgave himself his indiscretion during our marriage, eventually remarrying a woman who could double as my twin.
My stories of love's haunting didn't end there: My last boyfriend, reminded me of my European father--short stature, frenetic energy, love of women and travel, grey eyes, and Parson's nose. Similarities that were uncanny and, initially, disturbing. Was I revisiting my relationship past with my father? Subconsciously, the draw was a return to the tumultuous relationship I had with my father, a man I stopped talking to when I was 15 because he was too violent and mean. When I turned 18, he died suddenly and our relationship died with him, or so I thought. Was my ex-lover the ghost of my father? Yes and no. In a way, I dug beyond childhood insecurities stemming from my relationship with my father, including his constant riding of my looks, which he chided for not being white enough (my father was white and my mother Native Caribbean), to love a man who had the same prejudices and awareness of race and culture. Still, here was a familiar ending--a disappearance and no love in return, or so I thought.
Yet after Googling my last boyfriend, I realized he had loved me--deeply, truly, and madly--and it was an epiphany, surprise, and clearly evident in the woman he was now with. I thought about his love ghosts and how he never came to terms with a relationship when it was most vital: the moment he loved a woman, and she loved him in return. His fear of loss of control permeated his relationship until he found a way of ending it. The story was the same: a past lover trailed him as the ghost of great love in another woman who could never take her place. The new woman never had a fair chance to love and be loved; that is until the relationship ended, and she became the ghost of love past who he now deeply loved from a safe distant.
Even though life happened at the speed of light, love didn't. It was the same for all us, the ghosts of great loves lingering about, returning as another man or woman with the same smile or glint in the eyes who demanded we be joyful and grateful when they reappeared, even if they didn't stick around.
Even though life happened at the speed of light, love didn't. It was the same for all us, the ghosts of great loves lingering about, returning as another man or woman with the same smile or glint in the eyes who demanded we be joyful and grateful when they reappeared, even if they didn't stick around.
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