Remembering Past Loves

Growing up, I have had many loves in my life. They all varied, of course, but I know that when I was involved in each one of them, they were all very significant. My emotions were heightened, and it seemed like there was nothing more real or important in that moment. Thoughts would go through my mind about running away together and have it be just me and her against the world, and I was prepared for that.

 

Occasionally, I would write these feelings down in forms of emails, letters, or journals. Every once in a while, some of these writings would surface and in reading them, I would be transported back to a time when I loved more completely than I ever thought I could have.

 

However, reading this after the fact was something like travelling back in time. I would recognize that it was my writing and feelings at the time, yet I was reading them through a multitude of filters. Events happened, things were said, feelings changed, and the person I was now was certainly not the person who had written those feelings down. I was now listening through a resigned and cynical view, and for a moment I asked myself, “What happened there? Where did that person, where did that love go? It was so real, it was so vibrant!” And now it was simply reduced to a lot of meaningless words strung together on a piece of paper.

 

I’ve also witnessed it though countless weddings I’ve attended where the people were so in love and wanted to share it with the world, only to have them break up later, and despise each other with such a destructive nature. It makes me think how this was all possible, and what the path was that took us all down it. A part of me wants to show this evidence to my ex lovers and say, “Look how in love we were here. Is that all gone now?”

 

I know that looking back at all of these old letters and emails that I have blocked out much of the wonderful memories; so much so that it surprises me that I could forget them so easily. A feeling of sadness overcomes me for the loss that I have allowed to slip away, and with it, the possibility of something that never was. I wonder what I could have done differently, or how I could have been cause in the matter to make that go towards a place of exponential love.

 

Yet, there these letters remain. Pieces of my history that have now contributed to how I now see the world, based on the events that place me where I stand inside in the present moment.

 

It is my choice in how I see these love affairs, and how I allow them affect my heart moving forward. I could choose to be bitter and angry about it, but I’m clear that this only makes my future partner pay for the sins of my past, and not hers.

 

So, really the only choice is to be thankful for this experience, and the time that I shared inside of that wonderment called love, each and every time. -For I will always declare that it is always more agreeable to love with all of your being for the briefest of moments and then lose it, then to never have felt that love at all.

 

And in my journey of this life, I work on this process everyday. It’s not always easy, but then again nobody said that life would be; they only said it would be worth it…

 

And they were right.