Here's the truth for me about you I've loved before:
It's more than I still love you. It's I've never stopped loving you.
To be sure, some of our erstwhile relationship's parameters aren't the
same as they used to be when we were together and in love.
Geographical distances have increased between us to the point where
seeing each other on a day to day basis simply isn't feasible any more.
In some cases there's been neither contact nor communication (from your
side, from my side, it doesn't matter) to the point where I wouldn't
know where or how to get in touch with you again even if I wanted to.
In other cases Life, being what it is, has dealt us differing
hands of cards
over the years ensuring our time is filled with conflicting interests.
We may never meet again. And then again, we may.
But all that belies this simple truth: when I am alone, when I'm
by my Self,
I notice the love I had for you before is still in place now. Just as
intense. Just as thrilling. Just as sublime. It's never left. Which
means you've never left - at least not in my
experience. I've never gotten over you. And I don't want to get over
you. Ever. In a heartbeat (literally!) I can get back in
touch with the love we shared so it's once again and always a
living presence
for me right here right now no matter how long ago it was,
no matter where you are now, no matter what the condition of or even
total absence of our communication is now. If I don't love you now when
we're no longer together, then I never loved you then when we were
together.
And I did love you then. And I do love you now.
Being complete with you, recreating the love I had for you before, even
being related to you as I was before (and here I'm
referring to intentionally re‑generating the
experience of relationship and love I had with you before) may not call
for contacting you again - and it may. Sometimes it's not appropriate
for me to contact you again. I'm not naïve. Some episodes with you
weren't my shining moments, not my favorite scenes in the
autobiograhical
movie.
To tell you the truth, I hate watching these scenes. Sometimes I turn
my face
away. But they're real. They happened.
If I hurt you, I've explicitly apologized. Explicitly apologizing to
you has been, for me, crucial to completing the past and moving on.
When it's complete, apologizing doesn't impose or expect anything. Not
even renewed contact. Yet not renewing contact doesn't imply I'll not
renew the love - that is, my own experience of the love I had with you.
It's a re‑generation really, rather than a renewal because this
experience of loving you never went away.
I'm a human being ... hello? Aspects of me are brilliant.
And if (no, "when") I've been a jerk, I've said so. As we
all know in retrospect (and retrospect is always 20/20 vision),
being a jerk in love can carry a terrible cost. I've moved on. But
neither being a jerk nor paying the price for being a jerk extinguishes
the love which kindled our relationship in the first place. Like I
said, if I don't love you now that we're no longer together, then I
never loved you then when we were together.