Should You Chase Down A Past Love?

by Sarah Jane Shangraw

Life ensued. Jobs and relationships came and went, but in the back of my mind, I must have never stopped wondering about Avi. After more than 6 years, my memory was jogged when the second Intifada brought images of familiar places to the nightly news. An American actor who looked like Avi made a series of popular movies, and I felt haunted by the handsome face I had once loved. Places, smells, and even Hebrew words came flooding back, sometimes in dreams. Then, during last summer’s war in Lebanon, I started to obsessively wonder about Avi. Was he even alive?

By now I was married, and my fear and wonder about Avi seemed unsavory. I told my husband about it; he supported the idea that I might find relief by just learning about Avi’s general whereabouts. Finally I got the courage to contact his one sibling who could be found on Google. Soon after, I heard from Avi himself. This was just over a year ago.

Through some great email exchanges since, I’ve learned that Avi did all of what he once told me he planned to do in life: travel at length, study history at university, and become a teacher. He now teaches disadvantaged, inner-city youth in Tel Aviv and studies and writes about liberalism and secularism. Only my favorite topics. Turns out he’s quite a smarty. He’s cool, yet compassionate. My heart skips a beat when his name appears in my inbox. Though we’ve toyed with the notion of meeting again one day, it is clear neither of us is going to pursue it any further. To what end? But we keep writing; we keep checking in on each other.

And I have learned much about myself and my relationships in revisiting my past, namely:

How we change over time and can be left with an ill-fitting relationship as a result; how we must let our partners in on our metamorphoses and give them space to learn to love the new us and ask them for space to find new things to love in them—or suffer the consequences.