The world is so lucky to have the wonderful and wise Jeanette Winterson. In her latest piece for the Guardian, she explores the ways in which we remember past love relationships, and how these ways affect the present. With one of her classic, brilliant hooks, she begins with, “Nostalgia for lost love is cowardice disguised as poetry.”
It’s not that we shouldn’t have fond memories of past loves, or even regrets, she says.
But recognising the past as our past, and being able to groan, giggle, blush, sigh and play with those memories, is not the same as a corrosive secret infatuation with the idea of that special someone we managed to mislay. Sighing over a fantasy drains energy from reality. What happens in our heads isn’t private; it is unspoken, that’s all. We all know what it’s like to live in the stifling atmosphere of what is unsaid.
She goes on to discuss the hard work that real love demands and how she finally realized that she was running the same story through all her relationships. But the line that stays with me is the one that unveils the myth of privacy: What happens in our heads isn’t private, simply unspoken. How true, and how easy to convince oneself otherwise.
Winterson concludes by inviting readers to share their stories of lost love. For details, read the full piece here.
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