Relationships sometimes overwhelm me. Of the many mysteries of life, lifelong bonds of friendship and love are to me the most mysterious of all.

When you form a special bond with someone – a friend who sticks with you through the ages, who’s always there for you and you for him – that is special beyond words.

When you’re separated by time or distance – not seeing or hearing from each other for years – and the stars align to bring you together again, it’s as if nothing changed. Time and distance disappear in the magic of the moment.

And if there are friends for life, what of lovers?

There is nothing logical about the concept of love at first sight, or the notion that there is one true love out there for each of us. It makes no sense at all. There was a time when I would have laughed at such a ludicrous notion.

Until I laid eyes on a woman who made my heart soar. If you’d asked me that day if she could be the one – that we’d still be together nearly 30 years later – I would have said I don’t believe in such things. But deep inside, I knew. And I wondered if she knew it too.

How does that sort of thing even happen? Is it just attraction? Hormones? Procreation?

If so, how could someone who rails against the very idea of one true love know in his heart that he has found her? And how could that same person – still disbelieving that silly idea – look back through the years and know in his heart that she was the one?

Though time and space have sometimes separated us, and joyous and tragic events have changed us, she remains the one. The only one. After all these years my heart still soars for that woman. And after all these years I still don’t know what she sees in me. Of the many mysteries of life, that remains a mystery to me.

She is still a mystery to me.

Image credit Roel Wijnants whose Flickr album, Love and Friendship, inspired this poor-man’s poetry.