First written in winter of 2021– I needed to reread this.
Have you ever wondered if you missed out on a lost love? Have you ever wondered if the circumstances or timing had been different, your life would look much better than you currently perceive it?
I talked with a few close female friends, and every single one of them had a moment in their life where they wondered the same thing when remembering a lost love from long ago.
Matters of the heart, especially when dealing with love, is such a complex thing. It isn’t something that can be shooed away with a simple thought nor can it be pacified with a pat answer from a friend. The heart goes on its detours, and it is hard to wrangle it back on track.
Our journey is full of twists and turns, some of which we don’t see coming. How did I end up here at the beginning of this year with a weighty heart and these questions on my mind?
It all started with looking for a photo.
Our school counselors had sent out an email to teachers over Thanksgiving break. We were instructed to find a picture with Santa, preferably one when we were a baby or small child; we would also provide a more current picture with Santa if we had one. To get our students into the Christmas spirit, they would attempt to match our pictures on the bulletin board just outside the counselors’ offices.
Finding my baby picture with Santa was easy. I had just come across this photo over the summer as I was cleaning out my garage. My last photo with Santa was with a guy I dated years ago. We were in Brookwood Mall. He personally knew the Santa character and thought it would be fun. I knew I had kept the Polaroid; however, it wasn’t in my photo albums. I didn’t think much else of it. I thought I’d just submit the one photo and be done with it.
Around Christmas time, before falling asleep one night, I thought of another photo that was taken by that same guy from years ago. It was a White Christmas in Alabama that year. We have seen very few of those, so it was special. We opened gifts from each other near my fireplace. It was just the two of us—our own special Christmas. Snowflakes were falling, and like a kid, I wanted to run and play in it. I pulled on my snow boots, slipped into my jacket, and draped a scarf around my neck. He followed me outside and observed, taking pictures of me, which he always did whenever he had the chance. He had a good eye with the camera. That one picture of me playing in the snow was a favorite of mine. He had captured my youthful, playful side that day. He was watching me, and I was happy.
Within minutes of recalling that memory, I remembered where the Santa photo of him and me might be. I am a keeper of meaningful cards and writing from family, friends, students, and the few I have dated where there was a meaningful connection. With at least 25 years’ worth of these treasures in one place—about four piles high in a cabinet drawer— I knew finding this one picture wouldn’t be easy.
As I surveyed the piles of memorabilia, my eyes caught a glittered booklet—something he had made for me. As I pulled it out of the middle of one of the large piles, it grabbed everything in that one place that was from him: his emails I had printed, cards he had given me, and one of his guitar picks– it all fell at my feet. The Santa photo was in that same pile. It was almost like I was meant to find it. It was like a time capsule for me, buried by years and found like treasure.
Something in me knew this was a dangerous endeavor, to reread old love letters from him. As I glanced through them in the attempt to avoid resurrecting old feelings, my eyes caught an email about a story he wrote to me in October 2010. For some reason, I decided I would read that one email.
The story was about Orpheus and Eurydice, but he had intentionally written it as if we were the two characters. Reading it was like entering a time machine. It also triggered me, for so much of what he said was a prediction of our future 10 years later. Some of the things he said were a bit exaggerated (after all, it was written as a fictional story); however, there were more truths inside of the story about him and me (gone our separate ways) than I’d have liked to have accepted.
His email read more like a prophecy than a made-up story– his last line being that 10 years would pass and I would look for him, only to find his ghost.
I was almost mad at him. He didn’t finish the story and tell me what to do once I entered these haunted memories– the present void of love.
I realized I had to add to the story for myself, moving forward.
I’ve heard it said that a small part of ourselves is attached to the familiar no matter how painful or inefficient it is. We tend to over-romanticize what really is and/or was. We remember the good memories; we forget the bad. Just like when someone dies. At their funeral, we are not stating their mistakes and mishaps of what they did to or in our life. We celebrate the good parts. God has a surprising nature attuned within us of goodness, grace, forgiveness, and unconditional love: Somehow our brains, hearts with its heartaches, and emotions are hard-wired to those memories of people when they were good and at their best. My good friend Jamie (an original expression of Keats?) puts it best: “Imagined melodies are sweetest, and the men we love are mostly imaginary.” I suppose we make things better in memory where they might not have been as great if we were to return to the actual state of when things unfolded in the present. At least that’s what I’ve been trying to convince myself of.
Now 10 years later when he has resurrected in my thoughts and heart, he would tell me to move on– no regrets– and yet I cannot help but feel an agonizing ache inside that things will never be the same for me. I’ve walked through a rite of passage where I am forever changed. For he was the tool God used to show me what love is and what it isn’t and to appreciate who I am so deeply within my very soul. He’s the one who has pushed me to unbury life’s losses and triumphs, getting to the core of who I am and what I want to be in a relationship.
Like his name, he would live up to it: supplanter and deceiver. You see, I was supposed to be the teacher, but he was the teacher for me. I’d have to say if he learned anything from me at all, I got the better end of the deal. I was the luckier one. I recently reached out to the person that brought us together, which I believe was divinely guided. She explained why, and I expressed the impact the pairing had made. I conveyed my gratitude to her because meeting him changed my life forever.
A time capsule tucked away and set aside until a divine time set by God… as a teacher. I pondered over the findings in the pile. Why now, God? It’s too painful.
That was the point.
Navigating and processing…not rushing from the pain but accepting it, feeling it…
This is important. Don’t move on too quickly from here, or you will miss the lesson.
Be willing to look at the negative feelings of the self without judgment. The triggers too. Sometimes these are just arrows pointing us to unhealed parts of ourselves, steering us in the direction of becoming a better, whole version of ourselves. May we all attain a place where we live more free, surrendered to the aches and pains of life with the capacity to see the hidden gifts within the various life traumas we have been through. Too many times, we see trials as bad and happy times as good when many times, it is through our trials where we learn who we are and who we must become in order to move from surviving to thriving, even when life makes no sense at all.
This life was never intended to rummage through the ghosts of our pasts to see what we can call forth from the grave of the dead. And it’s not the avoidance of old ghosts either. We make the best decisions we can at the time we make them. What is back there for me or you? What’s ahead is where the focus must remain.
Sometimes in sensitive situations, I force hard truths into black and white. Most of the time, this comes from the ego or a wounded place, so I have decided that I will write from a place of intuition, a God-given part of me I have too long neglected and not trusted– a God-given supernatural power that breaks down illusions, mind’s lies, and fabricated insecurities we find refuge in. We want answers. We want a straight “yes” or “no”, and though I believe our lives turn and deal in absolutes of what once was, is now, and will be– for those things, we live in a black and white world; however, it’s the emotions and feelings that deal in ambiguity where the mind overworks to make sense of things and can suffocate the life out of our highest being.
For me, I remember what matters most: I could not hide from him nor could he with me. Even if we tried to, it wasn’t a state we remained in for long. We pulled toward each other in the greatest of ways where this wholly surrender brought freedom of thoughts, even the ones scariest to admit to the other and to ourselves. The truths of our hearts and in our hearts were laid bare before each other and God, but mainly for ourselves.
I could not hide from my beloved, and he could not hide from me. What we had was raw and lovely. I will reflect on what good his memory brings to my life. We are separate yet connected forever, and that is something beautiful I will cherish for the rest of my life. He is a part of my story, and though bittersweet in the end, it’s the tender, messy part that feels like chaos in my emotions yet makes more sense than most things in life. It’s not a black and white story; it was a relationship filled with ambiguity, and I suppose it is the one that will leave a mark on my life like no other. We were supposed to meet. We were meant to meet– this, I believe, by God’s design.
Stars break apart, yet cannot. There is a pull. Maybe he is my North Star amidst the map of vast galaxies where all others will pale in comparison– my North Star where I will find my way to the one who fits me best. Yet scariest of all, my high standards have only become higher, for I cannot and will not settle for less than what I believe was the most beautiful of loves I have known in this lifetime when I could be most myself.
Photo by Apricitasart on Instragram