A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

This morning I woke up to a hard rain falling, and the sound of Bob's voice inside my head, one of my top picks to provide the soundtrack for my life:

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

As I've written about the past few days, some hard rain's fallen for me psychologically on this trip. And as I'm wont to do lately, I've talked at length with my man about my feelings. It wasn't the first time that I was feeling bad, and he tried to cheer me up, and then I felt like he wasn't just letting me feel what I am feeling. There is some truth to that, and he owns his part of it, but as we worked our way through it, I realized that mostly, my response to his not wanting me to feel sad was a result of an emotionally fraught trigger from my marriage. See, things were great while I was happy, and they started to fall apart when I was depressed, and whether it's fair or not, I walked away with a wound that understood that I'm only going to be loved if I am happy.

It's so good to be in a relationship where when he says: "I think you're overreacting to this" I can say: "Yeah, I am, in fact what I'm reacting to isn't this at all but an old wound" and then have him reassure me that he's not going to leave me if I'm sad, but he is going to care for me extra tenderly during those points and try to help me get back to happy. As he reminded me, that's how we got started -- he was sad; I listened compassionately and then pointed out the choice (and maybe provided an incentive) to feel better.

As usual, Bob's poetry has more for me than just the chorus -- in this verse he sings about meeting a man who was wounded in love -- and I'm damn glad to be at a phase of my life where that's the man that I met -- because I think our prospects for dealing with the hard rains that are sometimes gonna fall are a lot brighter given our combined experience on marriage #1:

Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded in hatred

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

If, like my roommate this week, you like Bob's songs better when he isn't singing them (blasphemous though it is!), you might want to check out Edie Brickell's version of this Dylan classic -- it comes in second of the versions I found -- or Jason Mraz, whom I've awarded the bronze.