To all the people I've loved before.....

There should never be a past tense when Love is being talked about. For it denotes only one or the other thing, a) the person loved is no longer alive and hence cannot be loved the same way or b)the person loved though alive, has ceased to love you back.

How does one pay tribute to one's own loves? What words ought one choose to commemorate those once exalted feelings? How does one stop, at one particular point in time, to love those whom you loved always? How does not being in existence affect love and loving? How does one love those who have categorically and systematically made a conscious decision to not love you?

I am at a complete loss. I know that I love the most important and precious people in my life, who, in fact, made my life all what it was, they completed the circle, they were the reason of living, and they made up the reasons for now and then, and all that is to come. How, then, am I supposed to learn or rather unlearn to love them?

If death has claimed my love, how do I then find new ways to love and dote on that person who I'd never again meet in this lifetime, how am I to cope without their voice, their laughter, their presence, the 'wonderful knowing' at all times that they exist, are and can be reached. Now, there is only an empty space! devoid of all sound, all smells, all essence of closeness. When I search for them in this world and the world of my imagings all I get is stealthy cold silence. My love, my feelings, my sheer longing for them evokes no response from them - there is stark emptiness, a void. How am I to love in this void?

If misfortune has claimed my love, how do I then go on? How do I understand and comprehend and then translate that factual knowledge into reciprocal non-feelings and indifference? Is that even possible? I am told that abuse and mistreatment from a lover will and should turn the love sour and I am sure that it does too, but to a certain extent only. It has nothing to do with being a door-mat or a floozy, it has everything to do with 'sincerity' of feelings and depth of your emotions. You know that you loved wrong, and perhaps you are better off now, but you cannot automatically tell your inner soul to erase those very feelings of love. They stay, they live in your bosom and they continue to prick you like a sordid and horrid thorn!