The Clock Strikes Midnight

 

You know… I always envisioned writing a book one day. It was a phrase I always said… “One day, I’m going to be a published author… one day, I’m going to be in bookstores and one day… being an author is what’s going to financially sustain me!” 

It was a sentence that became so part of me that it became second nature… except there was just one thing… NOTHING I EVER WROTE STUCK. No story I ever created pushed me enough to pursue it further. They were just tiny tales to spin my creative mind and feed this “hobby” of mine. 

It wasn’t until I was 39 that the wheel for this life long dream started going in motion. I was on a flight from Reykjavík to Denver on December 30th, 2019. After a trip that inevitably changed my life. I had another trip like this once before but at the time, I wasn’t at all thinking about that one. Because that specific trip happened so long ago. 

For almost eight hours, I didn’t move from my seat. I was enthralled with the show I was watching, I was mesmerized by a character that was not only extremely handsome but had a storyline much like myself… always doubted, never feeling good enough and always having to prove themselves sometimes not in the best of ways. 

I jumped on the Vikings bandwagon. I became at that moment an Alex Høgh Andersen fan. I began loving the enemy you were supposed to hate. Ivar the Boneless became my motivation. 

Oh how he became the motivation… in a future so uncertain and a life that I was so unaware that was about to be put on pause, reflect upon and changed. The 2020 pandemic was looming although I knew nothing of it at the time and this guy would be main driving force on a self-love journey I had been searching for. 

On New Year’s Day of 2020… there was a strangeness in the air. I felt something big was about to happen and for that entire year, I believed that I was tapped into the pandemic swirling about… it wasn’t until later that I finally realized that tapping in had so much more to do with me personally rather than the outside world. 

Life had stopped for everyone. We couldn’t go anywhere, we couldn’t do anything… we were all forced to watch livelihoods and lives fade away. We were forced to make unfamiliar changes to routines that were such a part of us. 

But isn’t that how things usually go? Those tower moments forcing us to rebuild, recreate and leave behind what is no longer needed and let go of what is holding us down from the progress that is bound to happen one way or another. 

I wrote and I wrote. I watched every episode of Vikings, I became a fan of Alex’s and in turn got to know him the way any fan of someone can. 

It was this year I really teetered with that person I said I would always become… AN AUTHOR! But the thing was… nothing… no sort of fan fiction story I wrote was sending me over the moon to truly make a go of it. I was still just most certainly dabbling with the thought and nothing more. 

It wasn’t until January of 2021 where like a flash of lightning the story I would write came to me. Still in the thick of the pandemic, I still wasn’t doing much. I had nothing but time on my hands so yet again I watched another thing but this time it had nothing to do with Alex but everything to do with me. I watched a movie about Ibiza and felt like I was watching part of myself. My 20 year old self that went there and met someone that altered my life forever. 

The way Ibiza happened for me was very much the same way it happened for the girl in the film. It was a last minute decision engrained in following instincts and where your soul was trying to take you. 

For me this side trip was part of an adventure as a whole to see that the world was bigger than my hometown and my first love who was constantly cheating on me. My mom wanted me to see that there were more things out there waiting for me… I just had to let go of the fear of what I was comfortable with. Meaning, I had to move and go to school and experience life before it was to late. Before I resigned to marriage and babies with a partner that couldn’t for the life of him stay faithful. 

In Ibiza is where I met him. A man that took my breath away as well as a piece of my heart. He spotted me first and initially, I assumed he was staring at someone else. My self-esteem was nowhere near thinking this gorgeous man was looking at me. 

It wasn’t until I left and he followed me with his eyes, that I finally realized it was me he was watching. He wasn’t creepy in any way but more so seemed to be taken aback by me… which is kinda funny given how beautiful everyone is on this island and how insecure I felt at the time. I was chopped liver in comparison. But he couldn’t keep his eyes off of me. 

I didn’t believe I would see him again. I resigned that he was just flirting and this is a love island after all so that little ego boost would stay as is. An ego boost. An hour later in a very crowded club with several rooms and thousands of people, I am enjoying the music and dancing with my girlfriends only to look over and this the guy again and yes again… he’s there just watching. Smiling even more than before. His blue eyes piercing through me. I lost my breath and looked away but then looked up and smiled back. I waved and he moved forward. We talked as best as we could, we danced and then a little bit later him and I parted ways. That’s how this place went. You explored and danced and met people along the way. 

I’m in another room and once again… I feel someone staring at me but this time from above. I look up and he’s upstairs smiling down… this time he tells me to wait and I do. For the rest of the evening we stayed glued to one another. We end up leaving together to go somewhere else but before that happens, I am pulled in another direction by another man. This pisses the guy I had been with off and in a protective manner he defends me and pulls me in to his chest, pushing the other guy’s hand off of mine. 

We leave and spend the next several hours together. He’s sweet. He’s tender. He’s into me. I’m exhausted and my girlfriends want to go lounge at a beach, so reluctantly I follow them. This guy and I make plans to meet later that night. Unfortunately though, after being up all night then lounging at a beach, I fell asleep when I got back to my room. This was meant to be a nap but it turned out to be an all night siesta. I woke up much later than the time we were supposed to meet up. I got up anyway and walked over to the club he was supposed to be at. He wasn’t there and I waited as long as I could. He never showed up. I walked back to my hotel feeling defeated. I sat in the dark while my friends were still sleeping and scolded myself for letting this guy slip through my hands. I prayed to run into him at least once more somehow and then I went back to sleep. 

I woke up the next morning although refreshed, super disappointed. I assumed that was it. Just a full on twelve hours before that carriage got turned back into a pumpkin. That was my Cinderella moment and I would appreciate it regardless. Nothing else would come of it… but at least I had that. 

I walk outside and see a note sticking out from my hotel mat. I figured it was management reminding us of our check out early the next morning, I grabbed it and put it in my pocket then went to the store. When I came back I put the note on a table and finally looked down. It wasn’t from management but from him. He informed me he had ran late too and apparently just missed me because people saw me come in and leave and they watched where I went. It was others who told him where I was and well, he wanted to see me. 

I called him and that evening he came ver. We spent the entire night making out, laughing our asses off and talking. I felt at ease with him and at home. Although he couldn’t stay the night… a wish a girlfriend asked that I reluctantly accepted… he stayed until the sun came up and shortly before I had to leave the island. There was a sadness in his eyes when we said goodbye that I just can’t describe. Like saying goodbye to a soulmate or twin flame or someone who was definitely meant to enter your life and stay there. 

We gave me his address but I never gave him mine because on this trip I decided I would be moving once I got home. So I had no clue where I would actually be. Even though and without saying it… I wanted to come back there and start a life with him. That’s how intense and real these feelings and few days were. 

Unfortunately on my way to my next destination, I dropped his address on a train somewhere between Spain and Amsterdam… and didn’t realize this until I got to Germany where my trip would be ending and the final time I would open my journal to write. I was going to write him. 

For the next twenty years, things about that weekend would pop up… a video, a story and even a you tube clip that showed him walking towards me as well as watching me dance. And every time this happened, I looked for him. Using the name I thought I remembered. My search always came up empty handed… even though now looking back… I had found him a few times over but never realized it was him because there was no face to match what I was seeing and I didn’t speak French so I could not decipher what I was reading. 

About 12 years ago, my French bestie helped me a little once I told her the story of Ibiza. Although the last name I thought was his, she said didn’t make any sense. It’s not how French last names worked… whatever that meant. Still to this day, I don’t know what it means. 

I looked and looked but the distance between each search got wider and wider. And for a time, I stopped. I didn’t look at all. 

All I had were those memories and a photo that got lost in yet again another round of moving. Besides that though, I was moving on with my life and living my life. Despite always wondering, “what if?” 

For a few years, I didn’t at all think about him or Ibiza. Then I took a trip to Italy and I swore I saw him. However, do to side streets and crowds, I lost him as quickly as I thought I saw him. 

Another round of intense feeling came about… another round of questioning the universe and how it works when it involves people being placed in our lives? 

I still move on. There is nothing I can do… this person that I had this insane connection with will never be found. 

Back to that movie and January 2021… 

I watch it. I remember this memory once more, I replay it and visit it. I tell myself I am not going to look for him because my search always ends up null and void. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Lost to a sea of millions. 

For three days, call it fate or destiny, or my soul nags me to search. For three days… I ignore it. I reason, “It’s a fucking lost cause and a waste of energy and an activity that only sets me up for disappointment.” 

I should tell you though… before this movie was even watched, I had a dream about meeting someone. He was familiar and I felt safe with him. I never saw his face but he made it to a dream spot I call my happy place. Anyone that shows up here… is for a reason. 

Anyway… on the fourth day… I told myself, “Fine… I will look again. Stop nagging me, brain. If this comes up empty, I’m never looking again and I’m telling you a big ole I told you so and then I’m telling you to Fuck Off! Simple as that.” 

I go to Facebook first. I look with the name I thought I remembered reading on that 20 year old piece of paper I ended up losing. The same name my bestie said didn’t make any sense. 

Nothing. 

Finally, I dropped the last name and just put his first and Ibiza. I scrolled down and while doing so, I was telling myself, “You will know instinctively when you spot him… if you happen to spot him.” 

I scroll passed the first picture… not him. 

Then I scrolled passed the second picture and that ended in the same result as the first. 

I went passed two more pictures and nothing. 

Still nothing. Not the man I was searching for: 

Then, I hit the fifth profile and my heart stopped. That same smile, those same eyes just 20 years older. 

I threw my phone on the couch. I sat in bewilderment and amazement. I had found him. The guy that I never wanted to lose contact with, the guy that had plagued my mind so often, the guy attached to a memory that gave me all the strength I needed to leave a small town I had out grown and a partner that never valued my worth. 

I grabbed the phone again and within seconds saw photos upon photos of his life in the last 20 years. I saw a photo that I stumbled upon in a few of my searches years ago. The same photo that always popped up but I never believed it could be his. I had dismissed it time and time again. 

Within an hour, I was friend requesting him, I was sending him the You Tube video of us and a time stamp of him walking toward me: I asked, “Is this you?” 

The next day… he replied yes! He asked what this was about… he accepted my friend request. 

I explained everything. I said I was the woman you are watching and spent an entire weekend with. “Do you remember me,” I asked hoping he would and that the memory I had held with such importance for all these years, held the same weight for him. 

He didn’t remember. I was just a blip. One of many American girls he had made out with, I’m sure. 

I was devastated. I was heartbroken. My ego was bruised but I played it cool. I at least wanted him to know what he had done for me. He gave me the courage and belief I needed to feel wanted and desired… to feel like I could move on with my life when I got back home. Which I did shortly thereafter. 

I said thank you and that at least I was grateful that I finally found him after all this time. The giant kicker was he was the proverbial needle in the haystack. Through a misspelled name and us both moving from where we said we lived when we met, I found him. 

I never believed in love in first sight but I have to say with him, I did fall in love that way and through the years whenever this memory came back I always envisioned what it would have been like had we kept in touch. I always asked whomever is upstairs to watch over him and let him be doing okay. I also asked to please let me find him again one day. 

My book came after… this story… our story deserved something better. It deserved an ending that was beautiful and tragic and full of hope, regardless. It deserved the love that had been lost for two decades. 

And so I wrote it… a loosely based romantic, fiction series based on that one weekend. I named the guy in my story Alex because without Ivar, my character would have never been able to be separated from the real thing. I also had to pay homage and keep some anonymity. 

Just like before, there are so many things that stand in our way… and even though fate brought him back to me… we all have choices in where destiny takes us. 

I am married and well, I do love my husband. Do I think we will grow old together… maybe? We have been up and down and we are still ironing out some issues. I also can’t dismiss how my husband came into my life and what that means as well. So, right now… I am taking every day as it comes. 

But if I had a choice to go back… I couldn’t honestly say either way because this memory is attached to a person I had in my head… not the man that forgot me. And years have passed and we aren’t who we were that one weekend in Ibiza. 

My book and that weekend is what links us and I am not even sure he’s taken the time to even read it. We rarely speak and when we do… it’s small talk and nothing more. 

Love and timing and everything in between are very strange things. Meeting him changed how I felt about instantly falling in love. Being married has changed how I view a real relationship but through it all… there will always be a piece of me that wonders, “What if?” What if that weekend happened because it should have? What if I was meant to lose his information, never spell his name right, and be unable to find him for 20 years? What if, that fourth day and that fifth picture happened because it was finally time? 

What if this all had something to do with the courage to finally show up on a statement I always claimed that would? 

And by some weird shot in the dark… what if… he in one way was a soulmate too? 

What if everything and nothing all at once still meant something eventually? 

And what if timing has its own time line and forcing things to be will only mess up how they should be? 

Maybe this is just another unrequited love story? Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all? Maybe it’s just the muse I was searching for or maybe it means more? 

Modern love and tales of how we meet people that ultimately change our lives aren’t that modern at all… because at the root of it all, is that very thing that moves and shakes us to our core… love. 

And if it just means fondly remembering and letting go or building on lost time and moving forward… love, no matter what… will lead us to where we are supposed to be.