You Just Never Really Know What Was Meant For You

I have no idea why it popped into my brain but the other day I was thinking about a fellow in the same profession who a number of years ago, we went to a conference together (carpooling was arranged between locations and he and I ended up travelling together, we didn't really know each other before that) and we got along like gangbusters.

Like he made me laugh, a lot.  And he was cute.  And I think we liked each other.  There was a mutual "we're getting along great" feeling, and he had a girlfriend (I think I was single at the time?) and so when we both ended up back in my hotel room a little tipsy I made sure he headed to his hotel room right away, and nothing at all happened other than we had a great ferry trip back and I don't think we particularly spoke to each other after and I haven't seen him in years and years.

Every once in a while I think of him and just how much fun we had and how well we got along (and did I mention how much I laughed?) and the other day I had the thought "I wonder if he's married... I wonder how we might have been as a couple had he been single at the time?"

So, I went and found him on the Book of Face and I learned that yes, he is indeed married, with children, and that he has been receiving treatment for and trying to deal with his alcohol addiction.

That, honestly, stopped me in my tracks.  Because maybe he had been single and we had connected and maybe hooked up and dated and fallen in love and gotten married... and I would have been dealing with a partner with alcohol problems.  I would be supporting my husband and the father of my children as he wrestled with that.  I can imagine moments that were maybe less than pretty.  

So maybe things were a mere blip for the both of us (or, I can really only speak for myself) or maybe the universe didn't mean for us to be together because I wasn't the one meant to help him through alcohol issues and I wasn't the one who was meant to live through whatever not great things came from that.

I'm glad we got along so well on that one particular portion of our younger lives and I wish him well and I'm glad I didn't have to know the less than happy sides of his life.