[Scuba]

Ex-lovers, partners, friends are a funny thing in my life. Some partings have been painful but amicable and others have been quite painful and not amicable at all. I guess, for me, the ends are directly related to the amount of love, closeness and time I spent with a person. Although I don’t have contact with all of my exes, I do keep in touch with the ones who are capable of doing so. There’s really only a few. There are only two ex-partners that I have lost touch with. I love/d them both deeply and find myself in a melancholy “miss” occasionally when I think of them. Despite everything, I have a place in my heart for them both. Stories for another day…

The first woman I dated was of course, going to be the biggest loss of my life after we parted ways; or at least I thought so at the time and for many years after. It had to be. First loves are just like that. When we came together, I knew that I had emotionally “come home”. For the first time I felt authentic with another person. When we did part ways I found it far too difficult to keep in touch. We didn’t speak for a few years and for the life of me, I can’t even remember how we managed to reunite in friendship. It doesn’t much matter really. We spoke often for 3 or 4 years. I went to Florida to visit a few times. I think we both still very much loved each other we just didn’t quite know how to make it work. She wasn’t quite sure if she was gay, straight or bisexual. This certainly didn’t work in either of our favors. We ended up having another disagreement and that was it for, oh, another 10 years. I had always felt bad about that falling out and one day, while surfing the web for a vendor and a product I needed for work, I stumbled across her name. The great debate went off in my head and I stewed on whether or not to contact her. All said and done I eventually did. Her email address was on the web page and so I wrote her a long letter. It’s been a couple of years since I hit the send button and I am happy to say we are once again in touch and staying in touch. She has changed and so have I. It’s been great having that connection with her. Outside of my immediate family, she is really the only link to that time in my past. The only other person that knew me as well from that time in my life passed away back in 1995. I take great comfort in knowing that she knew me so well and now knows me today. I can honestly say that I still very much love her. Maybe that love has changed over the years but it obviously it still exists or we would still be a distant memory in each other’s mind. She comes out to Washington occasionally as she has family here. I have extended the invite. I’ll let her decide if that’s something she wants to do or not. I’m quite alright with our occasional online conversations if that’s what works best.

It’s amazing what time and space can do for people and their pain. I guess I just needed to understand that there is a direct correlation between our ability to love deeply and the amount of pain we suffer when love changes. Love and suffering are not opposites. They are indeed partners in life as well; a reminder to us that we can love again…deeply.
Thanks for letting me bend your “eyes” for a while!

Scoobs