somebody that I used to know

How often do you think about your exes?

On my lengthy drive to work, which I listen to music which always sends me to parts of my past (sometimes best left buried) I find myself increasingly thinking of lovers past (sorry, Jason).
As someone prone to drift between temporal time zones frequently in the least nostalgic settings this isn't altogether surprising. And music, so visceral, pops the most unlikely memories into your head. So I am really asking for it.

Sometimes I think this must be a modern problem: extended lifespans, increased ability to travel, release from early breeding and other elements that might tie you for longer and tighter to someone probably used to mean that most people had a lot less exes. I mean they might have longed for an old school love or the neighbor across the street, but I assume there were on the whole a host less lost and intentionally misplaced lovers to catalog and attempt to forget.

All of that being said, I am always fascinated by which ghosts haunt more than others. Which portions of my past stay insistently present, while others are purged comfortably.

I once was playing that "how many have you" with a friend and she was listing people to count and halfway through we realized she had missed two very long term partners. We laughed, uncomfortably, and shrugged it off, but if got me to thinking. She made a note that one of them just seemed so...irrelevant to who she was now. And it made me wonder: Is it who we miss that stays with us? Who rocked us the most? Or who was most present or instrumental in helping us to know and love ourselves.

So the other day on my drive as I was thinking about how I still actually miss some of my exes (sorry again, babe) I contemplated: why? I mean, I don't want to throw everything overboard and I don't think something key is really absent from my life way. But I do ponder how, if the world was different, how there are certain people I would integrate into my world, if I could.

It also struck me how fine it is to feel this about my friends. I don't feel bad because I miss close friends I rarely get to see. Hell, I have offered to have distant friend move in with us if they could live closer. I miss them, and I miss who I am with them.

I was also thinking about those I don't miss. Those I am truly fine with never seeing, smelling or talking to again and I realized the correlation wasn't who I was happiest with or who I felt the most strongly about or even those who I felt the worst about. Indeed there were exes who were terrible to me at times and I miss them, wish I couldn't know them again. There were also people who occupied extremely brief periods that I still think about, and even one that, at the time, seemed barely elemental and often pops up.

And it dawned on me that the ones I never want to see again (and are fortunately few in number) were the ones I least liked myself when I was with. There are relationships that are just not good for you. They require sacrifices that are less than ideal, challenges in un-therapeutic ways. Sometimes they simply inspire the worst in you: jealousy or laziness, sometimes they breed your worst instincts. Sometimes they just lull important parts of you to sleep. They rarely start that way, but over time you realize this is definitely not the place you want to be and you are not the you that you want to become.

I don't miss those relationships. I don't miss the people who got to share them with me. I assume they share that sentiment, but I can't guarantee it.
So it goes.

In the same vein, I know I will never be who I was, and that is okay. But I am not so blind to my own foibles not to recognize that certain people were part of a key evolution or a prime period in which I felt really good about myself and the life I occupied, even if it felt misguided (or was at the time).
More clear to say sometimes I miss who I was or how I was at times, and I know that it was partially the result of a unique chemistry,  an important exchange, and while what I learned is not gone, it is much harder to rouse alone.
To put it straight, sometimes you want to get the band back together again and remember how that harmony felt, how that song is constructed. It just isn't the same with a different guitarist, not matter how talented they are.

And yes, it is so so self involved. I don't miss you. I miss what you did for me. But let's be honest, our brain creates it's own unique planet of experiences, whether we like it or not. Humans don't dreamfast. Would that we could.