Someone from my past e-mailed me the other day, and I didn't write about it here, mostly because it's pretty much old news. You know all of my stories anyway. Don't you?

You don't?

Here's a brief recap: I was quite passionately in love with someone a few years ago. Let's call him James. I really thought I might marry him. I felt a connection with him that I'd never felt with anyone before or - let's be completely honest - since. (Yes, I know I live with D. I know we're happy. The thing is, you can never duplicate the connections you make with other people. Everyone is different, so you feel differently about everyone. It doesn't mean I care for D any less than I did for James. It's just different, and I don't feel guilty about that. You know what I mean.)

So James broke my heart. I can't remember ever crying as hard or as long as I did for him. I felt like we were soulmates, as stupid as that sounds. Thankfully, our breakup was a clean break. After our breakup conversation, I never called him back and he never called me. We were out of each other's lives for good.

I mourned for a long time. I was sure that anything I ever had with anyone else would pale in comparison to what I had with him. For a while, it was true. I dated other people, but none of them came close to making me feel the way James did. And I couldn't stop thinking of him, wondering what he was doing, who he was dating, if he was happy. Of course, I was sure that he was blissfully happy and never thought of me.

And then, three years after our breakup, he called and left a message on my answering machine.

When I called him back, he told me that he'd thought of me often throughout the years and had even called me a few times and hung up when I answered (childish, I know). He said he had never forgotten how special our relationship was and that he still thought of me as the best thing that ever happened to him. He said he had always regretted breaking up with me, but that at the time he felt he had no option. (I won't go into the details of why he broke up with me - that's another saga in itself.)

It was so good to hear these things. I'd convinced myself that I'd meant nothing to him, that all the love was on my end, that he had easily forgotten me. For three years I'd walked around with (forgive the corniness) a huge aching in my heart. It was so gratifying to hear that he'd had the same feelings, that I'd meant as much to him as he'd meant to me and that he'd been sad too.

(OK, this "brief" recap is getting long, so I'll fast-forward.)

We ended up spending some time together again. I won't say that we "dated" again, because it wasn't dating. It was more like just talking and getting to know each other again, trying to feel things out.

And then something unexpected happened: My feelings for James faded.

It just wasn't there anymore. All of his flaws were magnified. Instead of seeing him as a love-torn boy who just had to do what he had to do (again, long saga), I saw him as a weak, pitiful, spineless guy who hadn't had the balls to stay with me. He suddenly became very unattractive to me.

But we continued to talk, and then a couple of weeks later, he "confessed" that he was seeing me AND SOMEONE ELSE at the same time. The way he said it was so dramatic, so ridiculously overly dramatic, as if he couldn't stand to break my heart all over again.

I laughed in his face.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "We weren't dating anyway."

And poof! The spell was broken. It was closure like you could not believe. Closure. Capital C.

And that was that.

Of course, I still think of him now and then. Not in the way I used to think of him, obviously. It's no longer an ache. I remember only the good times. I remember what it was like when we first met and we were so unbelievably happy and in love, and I'm happy I had that experience, in a detached way.

So when he e-mailed me again (it's been about three more years), it wasn't even worth telling D about. (What do you think about that? I don't think it's necessary to tell your partner EVERYTHING, especially when it means nothing to you and can only cause trouble. Maybe I'm wrong, but I chose not to tell him, and I do not ever intend to tell him.)

His e-mail was simple and friendly: How are you doing? I hope you are well. Write back if you want, etc.

I'm not even sure what my point is in telling you all of this. I guess I'm just marvelling about the whole thing, how I went from being completely in love to desperately heartbroken to indifferent, and how at each stage, I was positive I would never feel any differently than I felt at that moment.

You never know how things will turn out in this big stupid world we live in. It's kind of wonderful, isn't it?