Love, Lost

While I've never actually uttered the phrase "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", I have said something similar to many friends, many times. I have told them about my own lost loves, about how I have lived my life without regret in the loves that I've had, none of which were permanent. I have explained how I've moved on, and how I can still think back to when I had those feelings and how I was glad to be able to look back on those times, on those loves, and that they would in some ways always be a part of me. Who you are today is just an accumulation of all of your past experiences, after all. Today you are who you are because of where you've been, who you've known, and what you've learned, and tomorrow you will be a slightly different person. The daily adjustments to your person are incremental, almost minute. But the larger events in your life make larger changes. Deaths of loved ones, people you love and lose, all teach larger lessons than the daily, incremental changes.

And having known this, having learned from a young age about losing those closest to you in death, and those you want to love forever leave you in life, I have always taken pride in my ability to see these things coming based on my failures in the past. I have always, since my last loss, thought that I would know that something in my life was permanent. That I could ensure that I was ahead in any relationship, that I wouldn't love again until I was ready, and until I knew that that love would be permanent. That it would not leave me, that I would not lose so heavily or pay such a price again. I always took solace in knowing that I had learned, that I would be the one that others would lean on when they lost so heavily, that I would be the one to help them through their times of need. That it would never happen to me again.

But it is insidious. It hides. It waits. It knows you better than you know yourself, and it exploits your needs before you even feel them. Before you know it, the need you didn't know you had, that you believed you could withhold, that you knew you could keep subservient to what you did, or did not want, including the belief that you did not want it yet again, is filled.

And then, without a pause in time, instantly after you realized that you had that need, and that you had to have what it was that filled that void in your life, it is gone. You're left with memories, with visions, and that most powerful of memory triggers, with smells. Golden hues that change in the light, and with movement. Brown curves that warm to your touch. Remembering the feel on your lips of what you no longer can have. Remembering the touch that will never be yours. And without the perspective that can only come with time, the once-familiar scents and tastes that are no longer so sweet and so needed, are now harsh and acidic. Like bile that rises from the anger you feel from so fresh a scar, from so recent a loss.

You don't know why. You can't point to a moment when you knew you needed it, or to when you lost it. You just know that it isn't the same. That it's gone, that the hole in your life is back and that your past attempts to analyze and restrict your feelings were foolish. The feeling that you can prevent it from happening again is replaced by the knowledge that you cannot.

And so you keep trying to bring it back. You foolishly keep going back to try and force something that cannot be forced. To resurrect those sights, and scents, and tastes, to restore your dignity, you keep trying what you know will never be the same. But your mind tells you that if you just keep trying you can bring back what you thought you didn't need in the first place. Again, insidious. Taunting.

It doesn't look the same. It doesn't feel the same. The scents are different. It no longer warms to your touch so much as go flat while you watch. Not only the glass, but what is within, is difficult to even smell. Where your first real introduction to beer was by way of the Belgian ales that you'd heard so much about, even the Trappist offerings that have been brewed to perfection for centuries, you now cannot stand the taste. It reeks of burning plastic, of harsh chemicals. The blonde appearance you once loved is now an odd and empty haze. The brown curves you felt in the glass you now scoff are cold, are without desire. The scents that were once so sweet, so malty, so spicy, are now described in terms like 'band-aid' and 'phenolic'.

No part of what you loved remains.