Introduction
“My anger is intense, and my vengeance is exacting.”
-Darlene St. John
This is a story of an age-old ritual played out every day. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy marries girl. On the surface, it seems like a routine series of events; like a math equation. One plus one is two, two plus two is four, but with them, one plus one is — no one really knew. Most couples I’d met all seemed very ordinary. However, John and Darlenes relationship wasn’t ordinary; quite the contrary. It was complex. Let me explain.
At first glance, it was a relationship that seemed to work, though ‘on paper’ it shouldn’t. No dating service in their right mind would have ever paired these two. John and Darlene were a far cry from Romeo and Juliet, and the term polar-opposites came to mind.
John lived in a plain and simple world, and Darlene was surrounded by wealth and opulence. She had a perfect life. Good looks, intelligence, and drive. John, on the other hand, seemed to go with the flow. Darlene could have had anything her heart desired and wanted for nothing. Him? He was lucky he didn’t wake up under a bridge.
It would have been romantic to suggest they found each other like two ships lost at sea, but with these two, it was more like the Titanic running into an iceberg, but Darlene gave a gift to John that could never be repaid. She gave him confidence in who he was and what he could become. They had a mutual understanding of each other that defied what a healthy relationship should be. How could a couple like these two have ever been imagined? Perhaps God did it, but in this case, it might have been someone else further south!
As I reviewed the history of this duo, I concluded that the answer to how this pairing ever came together was fate. Fate brought them together and would be the culprit for this union, but it was a primal affection toward one another that kept them together.
No writer will pen it, nor will a poem ever be written for a love that can never be explained equal to this one; their love gravitated away from logic. When they first met, the fact that she was filthy rich, and he was dirt poor, didn’t seem to bother either one of them. Maybe they’re what they called soulmates.
It could be argued that they were just a couple that needed each other for whatever reason. But in my humble opinion, and if the truth were to be told — I think they saved each other.
