The One Who Got Away

Earlier today I came across a wonderful online magazine called Pictory. A recent "pictory" entitled "The One Who Got away" features beautiful photography and poignant expressions of loves lost and loves found.

From Pictory...

Think about the people missing from your life, and how you feel about them. What we remember — and what we forget — may reveal more about ourselves than about them. We have photos, letters, souvenirs, and fragments of memory, but our powerful imagination takes over from there: We color in the blanks. And that’s OK. Retouching old loves is a way of understanding what we want. It helps us find our way to new ones.

It’s impossible to know whether the experiences below are about infatuation, true love, lust, or something else entirely. But we can be sure that each of these contributors learned about life and themselves in the process.

This photo documents the happiest I’ve ever been, but it’s been two years now since we decided to see if we could be happier with other people. That’s the thing about happiness; you never can tell when you’ve reached a peak. You can only compare where you are to where you’ve been. Now all I can think about is two years ago, when I began my descent, and let her float up, away, and out of my life.

We met in New Orleans after Katrina. Working in the disaster zone, life was surreal and visceral and urgent, all the time. We traveled across the country together before he got away, or I did. The peace we found was not sustainable. It comforts me to know he is out there somewhere, mercurial as when we met.

Fortunately, the one for me didn't get away.