u/BaconToTheBaconPower

Pseudonyms are used and identifying details have been omitted or generalized.

“Laura” and I dated on and off from 1987 until 1992. We loved each other, separated, found our way back to each other, and then parted again. She broke off the engagement with her now current husband to come back to me then. There was never a real goodbye.

She eventually married and had two children. I did neither.

Last year, while my partner was away helping her parents for thirteen weeks, I had an intensely vivid dream about Laura. It brought back grief and regret with a force I was not prepared for. I fell into a deep depression, more severe than what I experienced after losing my parents.

In October of 2025 after more than three decades without contact, I mailed Laura a letter. I used no return address and addressed her formally by her married name.

I stated clearly that I was not attempting to reconnect. I told her that an unexpected encounter with her younger brother Jeff several years earlier had affected me, and that she had never entirely left my thoughts. The sheer number of bizarre coincidences involved in meeting Jeff would make Jung smile.

I wrote about the choices that divided us and how much I regretted allowing fear to determine my path. I told her that only after my parents died did I fully understand something she had said to me in 1992: that she would still be around after they were gone.

I told her that she had been a profound connection in my life, that her laughter and kindness had stayed with me, and that being together had once felt sufficient in itself. I said the letter was my attempt to release the pain surrounding the life we never lived.

I ended by wishing her husband and family well and saying goodbye.

A little over two weeks later, Laura sent a reply by tracked priority mail. It arrived four hours on the same day my partner returned from her thirteen-week absence, something Laura could not possibly have known.

I did not interpret Laura’s words as an invitation to enter her marriage or disrupt her family. Her boundary was clear, and I shall honor it. I care too much for her to put her life in turmoil; I simply will not do it. At the same time, I cannot pretend her response was emotionally insignificant. After thirty-three years, she confirmed that the connection I remembered had been real.

The exchange gave me something I had lacked since 1992: acknowledgment, forgiveness, and a genuine goodbye. It also made the loss more concrete. I now know that I did not imagine what existed between us, but that knowledge does not create a life together in the present. I mourn for the wedding that never happened, the children never born, time not spent together doing mundane things together like yard work or buying groceries. I recall looking deeply into her eyes one night and feeling a connection I have not felt since.

Perhaps that is the difficult truth of some lost relationships: being remembered can ease one wound while exposing another. It's made more painful to be told that "yes, what we had was real" a third of a century after parting ways. I accept the fact that what we once shared belongs entirely to the past and cannot exist in the present.

TCBY Papa Romano’s Pizza library stacks at MC Lagerfeld Halston 12 Oaks Fairlane LAYWBL Ediner Silverman’s Hudson's restaurant Terrace theatre Save the Best for Last library cassette tape goodbye engineer Teacher

I saw this knot patch on a crate in a hallway at work. I couldn't help myself.... :)

Trying to find a song, 90's alternative rock, female vocalist with an almost sneering voice. I recall the chorus having the vocals "slow, down...slow....dowwnnnn". Main body of the song may have the lyrics "you've got to find yourself"(?).

Trying to find a song, 90's alternative rock, female vocalist with an almost sneering voice. I recall the chorus having the vocals "slow, down...slow....dowwnnnn". Main body of the song may have the lyrics "you've got to find yourself"(?).

After 33 years apart we exchanged letters of closure, and then birthday cards...

[TOMT] [Music] [1990's] Alternative rock, female vocalist with an almost sneering voice. I recall the chorus having the vocals "slow, down...slow....dowwnnnn". Main body of the song may have the lyrics "you've got to find yourself"(?).

It's been 34 years, I've never gotten over you.