Rene Severance

There are some conversations you can't have. To have them is to ruin everything. Either/Or conversations are one example. There is no such thing as an Either/Or conversation. There are only OR conversations.

There are others you can't have. If you have them everything is over. And if everything is over you die inside. Not all at once, but you die; it's a sure thing.

There are conversations you have to have, no matter what. Because you must have them, they usually end in a matterless world of talk. There are things you have to say because if you don't say them you have no chance of stopping the thing that has to be stopped-before it does damage that can't be undone. These are all conversations you must have.

You can't have conversations about lost passion. Passion is a thing that can only be discussed when it is present. If you have it, or if two people share it, they can spend hours in delicious conversation. This is the nature of passion. To talk about the absence of passion is to ruin any chance of regaining it, to doom it to purgatory. Of course the only reason to have that conversation is in order somehow to save it. There is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost. Maybe not to talk about it is to keep it alive, or to keep alive the chance that it may return. Some people who are clinically dead come back.

Words can do almost anything, repair almost any pain. But they can do nothing for lost passion. So it is pointless to have a conversation about it. The person who no longer possesses that feeling can't be held responsible, not really. Nobody chooses to give up those feelings. Nobody is to blame, not really. Sometimes people get tired or distracted, sometimes they get lonely, sometimes they are mysteriously attracted to other lovers. It's not a thing they choose. If they could go on feeling that feeling with someone, they would. It's not a thing to blame someone for, the loss of passion I mean. So there is really no reason to think that talking will do any good.