Time After Time

            I have lived many lives since the dawn of time.  I’ve been as poor as a slave building the pyramids in Egypt and as rich as a prince in Spain during the Renaissance.  I’ve died of suffication in infancy and lived as old as a hundred and three in another, passing peacefully in my sleep.  All in all, there have been dozens of lives, that I have lost count at this point and would have to sit down and write them all down to produce an actual number.  But numbers mean nothing on the other side.  What really matters are the lessons you’ve learned while you were alive, the people you affected, how you treated others and the environment you lived in.  Each time you go to begin a new life, you aim to achieve certain goals while you’re there.  If you fail, you end up trying again in another life until you’ve succeeded.  Any horrible thing you do while you’re there—like killing or stealing—you will eventually have to make some kind of amends for, either in that life or another.  It’s a long process, a process to perfection. 

            Through my lifetimes, I have seen many wonderful things, been part of many key moments in history…but I have also seen a great deal of suffering and pain as well.  I have lived through wars and famines, plagues and natural disasters.  I have seen homes destroyed, families torn apart, lovers lost.  I have had my own soul mate taken from me too many times to tell. 

            Ryeowook and I first incarnated in Majiayao and lived one of our only peaceful lives together as farmers.  From that first time we lived on the Earth together, we felt bound to one another and knew that we could never part from one another.  Nearly every life we have lived, we’ve meet at some point.  Sometimes it is brief.  Once we ended up vacationing at the same place in France for three weeks, but I remember that I still recalled our time together forty years later on cold winter nights as I sat in my study, after my wife had gone to bed.  In other lives, such as Mongolia, we grew up in neighboring tribes and married young, having our whole lives together. 

            Far too many lives, however, had not run smooth for us.  Sometimes we both reincarnated as men, sometimes one of us was a woman.  It all depended upon what we want to get out of that lifetime and how badly we want to be together.  Both of us would prefer to be men, if given the choice, but it has not always been easy to be together under those circumstances.  Some areas were very tolerant of gay relationships in antiquity: China, Greece, Maya, Assyria, Egypt.  Those were just a few.  But as Christianity and Islam spread, so too did anti-homoual views and if we wanted a life together in an area heavily influenced by them, then one of us had to change our gender.  Of course, it is not odd to come as a different gender now and then anyway.  It’s all part of the experience of life.

            This was also not the only problem that ever came between us.  We’d been kept apart by social status, arranged marriages, destruction of our homeland, jealousy, pride, and countless other obstacles.  On occasion, we met after one or both of us were already married or engaged.  Sometimes it led to a friendship.  On occasion, we only met briefly anyway and it was nothing more than a meaningful encounter.  Twice it led to affairs.  That’s not something I look back on and I’m proud of either because usually I consider myself a man of my word, but what I am on the Other Side isn’t necessarily the person I am in each individual life.  And the amount of willpower you need to keep yourself from falling for your soul mate—especially the longer you know them in a lifetime—is substantial.  I’m just not strong enough sometimes.

            In our last life together, multiple things went wrong for us.  For starters, I was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1921; Ryeowook in 1922.  We grew up close to one another and met as young teenagers.  We were friends for nearly two years, however, before I made a move on Tomasz—that was his name then, mine was Stefan—and it was only shortly after we became lovers that the Germans invaded our country in September of 1939 and life became hell for us.  Those damn bastards would look for any excuse to off you and we had to be so careful about everything we did.  One night, he left my house well before curfew, walking home to his parents’ house where he lived, but he never made it there.  The next day, I searched and asked questions, but I was told by people who lived along the route he walked to get home that they’d heard commotion on the street that night.  A group of German soldiers stopped one of their trucks and rounded up a bunch of people for reasons no one was quite aware of.  None of them ever returned.  Years later, I came to believe that he was partially in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A group of politicians had been coming out of a tavern right near there and Tomasz was walking past them at the same time.  The Germans were sending out death squads to eliminate such people at the time and he simply got rounded up with these men of influence that the German military wanted to eliminate. 

            In my heart, I knew he was gone, although we never recovered a body.  I cried for weeks, I mourned for months, and I never loved another again for the rest of my life.  Some would perhaps have called me a recluse.  I mostly kept to myself after the war.  I took a job as an afterhours janitor at a hospital and kept to myself.  My father was also killed in the war and my mother died just ten years later.  As an only child, I had no other close relations.  None in the city with me at all.  At one point, shortly after I’d come to terms with the fact that he’d been killed and he wasn’t coming back, I thought about killing myself as well and sparing myself a long life without him, but somehow that didn’t seem right.  And I refused to do anything to benefit the Germans more.  My death would only accomplish more for them.  Of course, I reached an old age before dying of a heart attack.  Another God-damn forty-three years.  That’s when I finally got to reunite with Ryeowook again.

            I remember walking through a tunnel towards the light and my life flashing before my eyes as I approached the light.  Every detail of my life was covered, how my actions affected those around me, how I’d made them feel through my thoughts and words.  And yet it all seemed to happen in a moment somehow, because time was no longer a factor in this plane of existence.  Nothing could have pleased me more.  I’d been waiting long enough.

            “Kyuhyun!” Ryeowook called out excitedly, opening his arms wide.

            The moment I walked out of the tunnel and into the light, the light turned out to be a large garden.  There were trees and flowering plants all around us as we stood in a stone square with a water fountain in the center.  The water gently flowed down levels, creating a soothing gurgle beside them.  It was probably meant to settle people down that were shocked to suddenly be dead, since so many people die unexpectedly or aren’t ready to go, but I was excited to be back, even if my memories hadn’t all returned yet and I still didn’t recognize this place as the home I’d been to so many times before.  Ryeowook himself felt like home to me.

            The moment my eyes fell onto him, I ran for him.  He was only a few steps away and I immediately grabbed him and pulled him against me, crushing him against my chest as I hugged him tight.  Ryeowook broke into a fit of laughter, but I was so overwhelmed at finally seeing him after all this time, I began to cry and he quickly quit laughing and pulled away just enough to look up into my face.

            “What’s the matter?”

            I reached up and wiped my face with one hand.  I would only spare one, refusing to release him now that he was by my side again.  “I’ve missed you so much.  It’s been such a long time and I’ve been so lonely without you.”

            “You should have found someone else,” Ryeowook said, bringing his hand up and running his hand over my cheeks.  “Over forty years is a long time.”

            I shook my head and pulled him close again.  “No…it can only be you.”

            Ryeowook rose up on his tiptoes and brushed his lips against mine.  Then he nodded.  “For me, too.  In the past, when our souls were still young and inexperienced, it felt fine to marry multiple times or take on a new lover.  And that’s perfectly fine if I haven’t met you yet in life, but the moment we meet in a lifetime, you’re simply it for me now.  Even if we can’t be together for some reason, I still don’t want anyone else but you.”

            “That’s where we’ve gotten ourselves in trouble before,” I reminded him, my memories already beginning to come back to me in bits and pieces. 

            “True,” he admitted.  “At some point, I should ask the elders if other soul mates have this reaction over time as well.”

            “But not now,” I insisted.  “I can’t bear to let you out of my sight right now.”

            “You accused me of being clingy before I died,” Ryeowook reminded him, teasing.

            “I never should have let you leave that night,” I muttered, pressing my lips against his cheek.  “How many times did that thought cross my mind in the years after you passed.  I should have asked you to stay the night.”

            “But it was my destined time to go.  There’s nothing you could have done to stop it,” Ryeowook reminded him.  “If that’s the time they decide I need to leave, then nothing can actually stop it from happening.”

            “I know,” I said, somewhat angry at his logic, because although it was true, I still hated knowing it was, “I know, but what’s the point of taking you at seventeen years old?”

            “I had already learned the lessons I came for,” Ryeowook informed me.  “And sometimes the point of dying young is the influence it has on other people.”

            “I hate that reason,” I only said. 

            “I know,” Ryeowook said, hugging me back tightly.  “Try to let it go.  We’re back together now.”

            “I don’t want to leave again for a long time,” I told him.

            Ryeowook sighed.

            “What?” I asked, suddenly worried.

            “We only have a few years in between this time.  Maybe four or five, I think,” Ryeowook said. 

            “That will feel like tomorrow,” I complained.  “We were barely together for a year when you died this last time and the last several lives before that, we’ve not gotten together either.  Then I only get five or ten years in between lives lately.  What gives?”

            “I don’t know.  You could ask the elders and see if they give you an answer while we’re here,” he suggested.  “Do you want to go talk to them about your life review now?”

           “No,” I said, bending my head to kiss Ryeowook on the lips.  “I just want to be alone with you for a while.”

***Part one of at least three or four parts.  Hope you enjoyed it.  The second part is already written and after an edit and that, it will be up shortly as well.  Please comment, subscribe, and upvote if you enjoy it.  Thanks.***