a fragment from bittersweet by D Myers

I looked up bittersweet in the dictionary. Actually, I looked it up on dictionary.com, because I was too lazy to really look it up. How silly, the ways the internet has changed our world. I feel bittersweet every time I see that picture. Before I started looking up words on dictionary.com rather than the real dictionary. Before I ever even had to look up a word. I read all the definitions to bittersweet. I usually only look at the first one, and figure that the others couldn’t be too important, if they weren’t number one. But I want to find the definition of bittersweet that can describe the way I feel when I see this sweet, sweet picture. I guess that none of the definitions of bittersweet really matter. I’ve already decided that if I could make up a word to describe the way I feel, it would be bittersweet, regardless of any definitions dictionary.com, or any other dictionary, for that matter, provides. However, my quest was successful. My favorite definition was Definition Number Five. Pleasure mingled with pain or regret. I don’t really feel pain when I look at the picture, but I’ve decided that “regret” is what I’ll call that feeling in the back of my throat that makes me almost wish I would cry, that forces me to miss that silver bracelet that I wore from my second day of life until my eleventh year, when the clasp broke and I cried for the death of an inanimate object. It forces me to remember that never again will I fall asleep with my head resting on my dog’s warm stomach, that I’ll never get to see her again, ever, except for in all the other bittersweet pictures that I wish I could look at feeling nothing but joy. It makes me wonder just how sweet, with not a trace of bitterness, that cool water must have tasted in that desert where I lived but don’t remember. But I’m glad that all these memories, my lovely memories, are mine to keep forever, no matter how sweet, or bitter, or painful.