So here I am in L.A., totally surrounded by people much more informed than I am.
Or maybe they’re just more loudly opinionated. We’ll see.
But in any case, I’m too busy to post anything particularly profound right now, so I think I’ll just let y’all talk.
Here’s a question that came up on one of my listserves.
If you could have your lost love(s) back, would you?
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Heck no! I’ve got such a great one now, why would I want to swap?
–Kathy H.
I don’t think so. I’d be afraid of feeling disillusioned or disappointed once the halo of “lostness” had faded–and perhaps even more afraid that they’d feel the same about me.
You can’t step twice into the same river, as old Heraclitus said. . . .
Not with a gold brick and the cure for cancer thrown in.
I’m with Kathleen on that one. No how, no way (though I do get a Christmas card every year from one of them).
Nope. I’d rather stick with what I have than trade in on an unknown.
Perhaps this isn’t quite answering the question, but I’d give anything to have my grandmother back.
I haven’t lost most of my loves; I’m still friends with them. At least two would probably be willing to try dating again, if I was interested.
Rather to my surprise, I’m not. I’m still deeply fond of them both, but the spark has faded.
I’m a bit lacking in the human side of this . . . but I miss playing my saxophone terribly, and I still miss the two kitties I was forced to give up when I had to move into my parents’ house five years ago. I still want them back.
I’m living with the love of my life. But two of my lost loves are *dead*. I’d have them back alive if I had that wish. Even if it made for complications in my current relationship (though I think it wouldn’t).
“I haven’t lost most of my loves; I’m still friends with them.”
I’m with Rose Fox on this one.
There sure are a lot of wonderful people in my life that have died that I would love to have back with us.
-Patricia
It didn’t even occur to me to consider that the term “lost love” might apply to my loved ones who have died. I suppose I feel that what’s lost could maybe be found again.
I went through a lot of soul-searching after a partner of mine was killed in a building collapse several years ago, and eventually decided that it just didn’t feel right to wish him back to life. I miss him tremendously, but he died trying to help other people get to safety, and to wish that that hadn’t happened would be like wishing he was someone different than he was.
Mind you, I’m still angry at him for being such a goddamn Boy Scout, but I’d rather be angry at him for selflessness than wish him alive and selfish.
Better not to revisit the past, it always disappoints.
I’ve been “in love” with three women in my life.
One I’ve been married to for over 30 years. Best decision, evah.
The other two… no, I wouldn’t want to let myself get that emotionally involved again.
One of them (the one you know about, Walter) I still think of fondly, but I haven’t heard from or about her for years. I hope she’s doing well.
The other… the great grinding wheels of serendipity have turned slowly over the years, and we’ve ended up with slightly overlapping social circles again on the Net. And she’s still charming and brilliant. But… what the hell was she really thinking and feeling those last few months, when everything turned to utter shit, before she moved away? What the hell? That still perplexes me; that still hurts, decades later. (And she’s not willing to discuss it; I tried, a few years ago.) I enjoy her public persona, but… no, no way.
My own notion is that in order to love again a person you’ve loved long ago, you’d have to be once more the person that you were at that time.
Which means you’d lose all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom you’ve learned in the years since.
My guess is that if you’d have a chance again to meet that 17-year-old who broke your heart by taking someone else to the prom, you’d find that person uninformed and shallow.
Since you hear every so often of childhood sweethearts who reunite years later and live together happily, I’d say that’s a very lucky case of two people who grew up in complimentary ways. Not likely to happen. (And the one case I know of where this actually happened, the pair lasted only a couple months.)
Traci, I’m trying to work out why you miss your saxophone. Did you lose it? Can’t you buy another one? Or is it that your current living arrangements preclude your actually playing it?
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