A Year of Surprises?

This year started with quite a surprise. But that's for another time because four days into the year, one shocking revelation after another, I'm hit with this one ... and this one I can't help but write about.

My old roommate called me a few hours ago to tell me the BIG news. My ex-boyfriend of six years (who I broke up with over six years ago) has a new baby boy ... and he's planning on getting married in a few months. As E broke the news down to me, I felt as if my heart sunk to the floor and that my brain just froze because I could not utter a response. I felt lightheaded, and ... sad. Even as I write this now, I am still struggling with my words. But the surprise is not so much that he now has a baby with his girlfriend, it's that I'm emotional about it because I was over him a long time ago. And it's not like I have had any recent thoughts of even wanting to be with him again. I don't think about him at all. Yet, why is the news about his baby make me feel down ... as if, dreams I once had just came to a halting end?

I immediately shared the news with A since I needed someone to make sense of what I was feeling. As I reiterated E's words, I found that I became sadder and sadder. A said it's natural to feel sad about it since I was with him for a long time, and that we shared a lot together. She rationalized that even if the relationship did not turn out so well, and actually ended badly, I still loved him at one point. I guess that's what I have forgotten. That I did love him once. I even wanted to marry him and have his children ... once upon time ...

All of this got me thinking about this quote by Anne Sophie Swetchine: "In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost." I think that's how love is ... even when it leaves us, it is never really lost. Even when it has been substituted with anger or hate at some point, it is never lost. Perhaps, it just subsides ... and lives in a quieter place in our hearts.