When marriages or long relationships end, they don't. Whatever you want to call these relationships, they keep on going in one way or another, good or bad, and we often walk and re-walk events and turning points looking for some often-illusive meaning.
I've been in many long relationships. In my life, I've bought four wedding dresses, and given four away--unused. I never could make the commitment.
Being an increasingly happy (if struggling to be so) single now for an entire decade, I look back and realize that I wasn't really divorced from the last relationship at all and am still not. Rather, I have just spent the last decade cutting strings of emotional attachment, or weaving them into a different relationship. And healing.
Your mileage may vary.
Often people view segments of their lives by a piece of music that set the tone for a short or long period of time. I certainly have.
As a musician myself (my ex is a drummer), I am compulsively deliberate in what I listen to and if a specific piece doesn't fit the mood, it gets tossed aside for something that does.
So back we go in the time machine and here's the ruff. Note that I make no notice of geographical or gender equivalence in any of this. And I have no apologies. Life is what it is.
Week one:
Bumped into a mutual friend of ours. He said he had heard about the big separation (after 17 years). Asked me out on a date. Standing next to a huge concrete pillar in front of the supermarket, I turned and banged my head on it three times saying, "No, No, No!"
Suffice it to say I have never seen--or heard from--him again.
I'm free
Free Falling
Year One:
Just to show you where my mind was, this dark if beautiful little tune pretty much represented year one. Deep in depression (but not realizing it at the time), I was trying desperately to figure out who I was, who he was, and how I was going to make it financially and bounced back and forth between sort of sane and lost in the insanity of remembrance and change. He came from a family of Christian metaphysical practitioners and I from a Christian family that rarely if ever found their way to church. I had, however, in 17 years developed a keen sense of spirituality for myself that had a foot in one liberal Christian tradition and a foot in the metaphysical tradition, as well.
If anything represents how I felt then, it is this line:
You're a beautiful
A beautiful fucked up man ...
Year Two
Year two was worse than year one. Way worse. For the first time in my life, I actually found myself saying what I thought, tossing any sense of decorum, convention or manners aside for plain spoken gut reaction. It wasn't pretty and I'm still trying to figure out who remains deserving an apology.
Well, when I'm hurtin I have a dangerous tongue
I lose it and use it like a gun
Oh wont you stop me if you see me takin aim
I'm walkin through, I'm walkin through the valley of the pain
Years Three and Four
These two years were transitional as I tended to be more introspective if not an outright hermit. I was more or less trying to lick my wounds and heal. I'd peek my head out every now and then only to quickly crawl back into my shell. I read a lot of novels and having no internet or television, pretty much just let the world go by as little more than an observer, tending to the rescue animals and trying to make ends meet.
Have you ever turned the corner and wondered why you did?
You haven't been that way since you were just a kid
Nothing really happens and then you have to say
You wonder what would happen had you gone the other way
Years Five and Six
After returning to work full time again (albeit for an abusive boss), three years later I walked out cold without so much as an explanation or goodbye. I knew it would be hard financially, but I couldn't take it any more. It was the best decision I could have made and stand by that decision to this day.
Meanwhile, I had taken on a huge animal rescue project and transported 600 dogs/cats/wildlife to safety across the state of California and began to re-involve myself in local land use politics.
George Bush et. al. were pissing me off big time. I was furious about the continuing Iraq debacle and having gotten back my internet connection (I still to this day don't have television and don't want it, either), I read extensively. The more I read the more pissed off I got. I was beginning to come back to my old organizing/activist self though far more able and far less concerned about gentility in my opposition. This song pretty much summed up the horror I felt and the tragedy I felt Bush had brought upon the entire world. My personal struggles faded away as I began to take on the life-long mantle, again, as activist.
Even the geography of this song strikes a chord with me.
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms
Year Seven
Year seven was a strange one. I sort of regressed back into some personal places but was feeling generally okay. My anti-war sentiments were as strong--if not stronger--than ever. Interestingly, I gravitated back to a place (in song) where I began as a musician when I was in 5th or 6h grade. This is a classic if timeless piece and I began to play it, again. This was the first song I ever learned on guitar sung by a woman whose vocal grace--and life-long commitment to peace and non-violence--speaks for itself.
There but for fotune
Go you and I.
Year Eight
Year eight was, much like year seven, except that in the fall with the Santana winds bearing down on us, the canyons in which I live were aflame and the several thousand of us found ourselves evacuated for two weeks, many friends losing their homes in the fires and subsequently (year after year, to this day) suffering from related water damage and mudslides.
The arsonist was never caught.
As if I needed another trauma, only in following years did I realize that I still suffer from PTSD to this day. Even typing this brings tears to my eyes.
The loss to the land in habitat and the wildlife that died was so traumatic for me. When driving home, I cried the entire way, landscapes and trees I had known as if old friends of 35 years, gone.
For me, it was the watching of a lifetime burning. For 25 years I defended the area from the assaults of greedy speculators, corrupt politicians and mindless and uncaring planners. With two alleged devices, one person torched it.
I am as tied to this land as one could be. The soil and history runs through my very veins.
If anything could express my absolute despair, this song does.
And I ain't done nothin wrong
But I can't find my way home
Final Years Nine and Ten
Year nine saw my beloved return for a week to visit friends. Looking into his eyes and watching him, I realized why I had fallen in love with him to begin with.
But as with me, he had grown a sharp edge to him where there were just occasional points. I guess it might be that some of my experiences were, indeed, his in a different way.
And then, along came presidential candidate Obama emerging as the dem candidate for president. I was so proud. I am so proud.
I may not agree with everything, but I love my president and am doing everything I can to push his policy in the right direction. And I am not going to stop.
I'm generally healed, back in the fight and have my 'don't stand in my way' 'tude back. Yeah we have to fight, but I still believe. I still believe.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
I don't know what the next year will bring, but I am finding renewed and increased interest in environmental issues and feel called to the desert for some reason. I have some old personal business to take care of there, as well. I need, after 12 years, to bid the ashes of a friend scattered on sacred Mojave tribal lands goodbye. I need to go and do that. It's part of the bucket list.
So I leave you with this:
People will tell you where they’ve gone
They’ll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other’s just come to harm
Oh Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I wish that he was here tonight
It’s so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm