You're My First, My Last, My Everything

Such dangerous territory, these feelings about which Barry so powerfully sings:

The first, my last, my everything

And the answer to all my dreams

You're my sun, my moon, my guiding star

My kind of wonderful, that's what you are

I know there's only, only one like you

There's no way they could have made two

You're all I'm living for

Your love I'll keep for evermore

You're the first, your the last, my everything

Because almost without exception, no one is going to be anybody's first, last and everything, the answer to all their dreams, their sun, their moon, and their guiding star, and if there are exceptions to this, I'm pretty convinced they aren't healthy. So why do we crave that feeling so much? Why do we feel so euphoric when we think we've found it, in the arm's of a lover, and so devastated when we realized that we haven't really found something all-encompassing after all?

In her book, Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst talks about this being a totally natural human tendency that stems from having once been in a womb, a womb that was warm and safe and had all that we needed, and then cast out. On one level, not usually conscious, we walk around trying to find another womb to crawl into -- and when we find one it feels so good -- but of course, it can't last. Just as a mother couldn't be pregnant forever, we can't be someone else's everything for long, and in neither case would we want the opposite to be true. But understanding that doesn't make being cast out of the womb, literally and figuratively, any less painful...