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I would like to know what "I’d lost you" means in the following sentences:

We walked back to the veranda, and I couldn’t look at you, only at the ground, not sure what had just happened. I was hot. I was burning. I was entirely aflame. Then it was the next round, and my turn to be blindfolded. I laughed and laughed as they spun me, despite myself, and I counted to thirty, cold and dizzy when I opened my eyes, and you were all gone. I walked into the forest and there were Maksio and Agata, kissing in a clearing. I tapped them on the shoulder. They looked up, smiled, and continued their embrace. ‘I’ll find the other two!’ I cried, running further into the forest, over fallen trunks and little valleys. I ran until I was lost, until I was sure I’d lost you. I tried to find my way back. The forest had started to close in on me, to turn from enchanting to threatening. It felt like a nightmare, and I knew my mind wasn’t working clearly. I stopped, tried to calm myself. Then an owl hooted somewhere behind me and I turned. Whiteness glowed behind a tree, like a luminescent stone in the sea. I walked towards it, fast, my heart beating with imminent success. And then I saw the different shades of white – darker white on lighter white, matted marble on chalk. Two bodies on the forest floor, legs entwined. I stood, watching your feet move over one another, soles black with earth and leaves, writhing, struggling. There was cruelty in those round forms on top of one another – you over her, your chest over hers, her closed eyes lit by the moonlight. I turned back and ran. I ran and started to shiver all over, like a child who’s broken through ice and fallen into a lake and only just managed to crawl out. I ran and ran, becoming completely and utterly numb, not feeling a thing. Not feeling the cold, not feeling my lungs, only terror propelling me forward. It felt like, if only I ran fast enough, all this would not be true – that the further I ran, the further I would be from what I’d seen.

In this novel which is set in the 1980's in Poland under the socialist regime, where homosexuality was socially unacceptable, the protagonist Ludwik (a university graduate) left Poland in 1981 to live in the United States of America. And he remembers what it was like back then in Poland, where he decided to spend some days at the country house of Hania's family with his lover Janusz, Hania's brother Maksio, and Maksio's girlfriend Agata. On the second night of their stay, Hania prepared Zupa, the Polish heroin, and they all drank it and took off all their clothes and began playing hide-and-seek. Ludwik became the finder, while the rest of the people hid in the forest. Ludwik found Agata and Maksio, and was going further into the forest to find Hania and Janusz, when he saw that the two were entangled on the forest floor, making love.

In this part, I wonder "I lost you" is somehow connected to the fact that he was literally lost (he could not grasp where he was in the forest), or is trying to deliver the meaning that he lost his lover Janusz, or is just describing that he couldn't find Janusz and Hania hiding in the forest. In short, I wonder who "you" would be here. Would "you" be just Janusz? Or Janusz and Hania?

I am an English learner from South Korea, so thank you for your patience in advance as I may not know obvious things. I would very much appreciate your help. :)

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    I’m voting to close this question because it is about basic English grammar and may belong on another site such as ell.stackexchange.com .
    – shoover
    Dec 20, 2020 at 17:47

1 Answer 1

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"I'd lost you" is past perfect, meaning "I had lost you".

The tense "past" refers to events that have happened. The "perfect" aspect refers to events that have a result at heart.

Thus this means, that the lyrical I has lost someone and is focussing on the effects of having lost somebody. This happened in the past and it had an effect on a past event which may no longer have a relevance towards the present.

In the excerpt I do believe it is the actual losing of somebody since the lyrical I runs into the forest, although it might also contain that the distance meant that (s)he has lost whomever (s)he has left behind in a more metaphorical sense.

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