Funny, because the old OS X look (graphite Dock with clearly defined app activity indicators) in Lion was the main reason I downgraded from Mavericks in the beginning of 2015 (as of now I skipped 5 OS X's counting from Mavericks) and my machine up to this day has still been eligible for upgrades to the newest OS X. Also, Lion was the default OS. I had stock abysmal Apple HDD (mechanical) and RAM (4GB) in a "Pro" laptop. I found Lion worth this sacrifice because its performance was better by order of magnitude and Mavericks felt very painful and demanded too much from the hardware I had, it had a few very nasty quirks that I couldn't stand. I upgraded to Mavericks just after a week of owning my MBP so I even had no opportunity to learn Lion better and jumped a bandwagon as did others.
At first I missed some features such as Notification Center and those removed in Mavericks (RSS in Mail and Safari, Bonjour) had me wondering what it would be like to use them, also I found no Messages but iChat, however since I wasn't using Messages and didn't depend on them it wasn't a loss for me anyway. The rest of functionality was the same: iLife, iWork, accounts, connectivity, networking making it a close sibling to Mavericks. Some missed features were offered by 3rd party apps and soon I didn't have any lack of those: in fact UX provided by 3rd parties felt a lot better than that by Apple. Growl is better than any version of Notification Center. Integration with social networks isn't about productivity at all and there're dedicated apps that boast more functionality. BTW, a field that has had most gain for the last 5-6 years was not productivity but "sharing", outshining such gems as implementation of Metal technology that only geeks and devs could feel deeper appreciation but it's empty words for majority of users.
Likewise, iLife'09 and iWork'09 made me not regret my departure from Mavericks although I knew they were compatible. Google Maps still worked with iPhoto and Aperture and was outstandingly better. However that was about to come to the end as Google stopped providing its Mapping services to Apple apps in mid of 2015 (I got out by using HoudahGeo and GoogleEarth Pro) and integration between QT Player, Aperture and iPhoto and Facebook effectively ceased in the end of 2017 leaving me on the ice. I still could use Safari 5.1.7 in 2015 however from 2016 I looked for alternatives before settling down with Waterfox. Now I discovered Firefox Legacy, a port of Firefox Quantum to Lion and Mountain Lion, and this is a killer browser in terms of productivity and speed which is fantastic. I was disappointed by Safari 6 for Lion because it was utter trash both visually and functionally but I still missed the native experience it offered (Auto-correction, Keychain services) and no 3rd party browser fit my requirements.
I could put up with bugs of Lion because I loved how simple to use and beautiful esthetically it was as it bore Steve's footprints. I could run server, CardDAV, WebDAV etc services just wonderfully and really to this day I had no other incentive to upgrade than regaining much talked-about "sharing" and Apple Maps. Frankly, I could use it till I'm dead, it satisfied my needs ~90 percent. Security, as blasphemous it sounds, was never my top priority because I never in my life encountered dangerous situations even browsing unsafe sites. I think that getting better security is just a marketing trick to lure users into upgrading their systems and is greatly overstated by both vendors and security specialists - they need to find threats to defeat them or invent and gave them life. At best you're living in an illusion of security. Lion was my learning war-horse: it made me learn a lot about OS X workings, AppleScript, CLI, iMovie, FCPX etc.
At long last I maxed out my Mac, connected another SSD as an external bootable drive and added Mavericks and HighSierra just couple of days ago: going back after 4 years to Mavericks was like going back to a brief acquaintance you made a long time ago. It feels both modern and retro - the combination driving me crazy: I'm fully satisfied with it - Apple Maps being the gain No1 because of apps that use geocoding, it has more 3rd apps that support it. Now that I run it from SSD and with 16 GB RAM I see that hardware matters definitely for Mavericks (on a weaker hardware the system kills many jobs all too often - hence its cursed sluggishness and instability).
Not that it made drastic difference overall to my UX but in some sensitive areas like mentioned above it certainly did. Its Dock is a sign of decline in design (seriously whoever thought that replacing graphite with shining metal and active indicator spots with tiny bars lost his mind overnight) however the rest is as polished and consistent as you'd expect from OS X and shares most of similarity with Lion. I especially liked how they changed the font appearing in QuickLook. The greatest delight is that I still can use iWork'09 I even didn't download iWork'13 - don't need that junk taking the space. I downloaded new iMovie, GarageBand and, of course, iPhoto. Most of the apps I used with Lion work here too, I updated those that don't.
So why go forward? Well, just in case. I never ever had desire to upgrade to one of those flat crazy masterpieces but I did that installing HighSierra on a partition of the external SSD. What can I say? Yes, I noticed it's snappier (and this is 6 y.o. machine), feels like new. That's all to it. The first moment I saw this creature on my screen it was even worse than in an Apple Store on Retinas. Skeuomorphism is a go-to design for 1400x900 px screens - imagine how gorgeous it would be on Retina! Alas, Retina is wasted on such abomination of good style as this pots-Yosemite atrociousness. However when I look at this new and supported, super-duper-secure OS I feel headache, boredom and weakness of mind and the body being inflicted on me. I can't imagine myself spending 100% my computing time in it. It's like spending the whole day in a contemporary art museum, staring at glass and bare concrete in every shade of gray (the detention cell from "1984" by Orwell comes to mind first of all). I see sharper pixelation and granularity of graphics than in Mavericks&Lion and that's bad, washed out grey texture of the application bar. I don't care how advanced it is - as I said even Lion would be enough, Mavericks is welcome overkill. But this... You know there's nothing to HS, Mojave in its own right for the end user (Metal is great for reverence on part of nerds and eGPU is cool features for like 10% just like TouchBar and HomePod). The look is what matters and the functionality goes after it. More to that: look is functionality and vice versa: you see, you make decision, you do. Always was. Always will. So will I: I made 3 partitions across 2 drives and running Lion, Mavericks and HS concurrently, most of them time it's the former two, of course. HS is for working in FCPX.
To the original question by OP: no, you're not the only one. I assure you that in reality very many people would dream of skeuomorphism and old UX to make its triumphant return, it's just fake media and various pundits on Twitter declaring triteness the Art. But to Tim, Johny and their shills the flat UI is the pinnacle of design and usability combined with restrictiveness that is called "security and simplicity" in their jargon.
P.S. BTW, how do you like the "simplicity" that iTunes 12 is? It gradually evolved into like an appendage to push Apple Music down your throat. Apple Music is a gateway to the greater control over what you listen and watch via iOS - the only creation they care, not user experience. So more Apple Music - more iOS ("simplicity and security")
