Change

The ipod shuffled onto this one last night in some of my last moments before sleep, when I was processing kind of a jumble of feelings. It's a beauty, and, as the universe would have it, it asks a number of questions that grapple with many of said feelings (love, heartbreak, former lovers finding love again with other people):

If you knew that love can't break your heart

When you're down so low you cannot fall

Would you change would you change?

To that verse, I can answer a resounding yes, both for myself and for my new(ish) love, because I think we both experienced standing on our edge where just a little more fear could've pushed us back down, but when it became clear that changing meant embracing love - we were up for it. And I do think there was a part of both of us that knew that love can't break your heart -- 'cause once you start feeling love again, it's harder to call your heart broken.

I suppose the same is true for my ex-husband as he embraces his new love, and I suppose the same will, at some point, be true for my man's ex-wife. And that's a good thing, it just feels sort of odd sometimes. Looking back on the latter part of our respective marriages, these questions seem apropos:

How bad how good does it need to get?

How many losses how much regret?

What chain reaction

What cause and effect

Makes you turn around

Makes you try to explain

Makes you forgive and forget

Makes you change

Makes you change

I think the key is that we sometimes come to a point in a relationship where it's just about impossible to change in productive ways within it -- and I think that point is where fear, not love, unconsciously starts to drive.

My ex-husband and I definitely got to that place, a place from which it was difficult, if not impossible, to deal with just what she is singing about in this next verse, a truth that brings a pain that can't be soothed:

If you knew that you could be alone

Knowing right being wrong

Would you change?

Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth

That brings a pain that can't be soothed

Would you change would you change?

What I needed, at that point, was for him to just be with me with that truth. To soothe the part that he could soothe, or at least, I thought/hoped the man I'd married could soothe some of my pain. And maybe we did that for each other in the beginning, but over time, it hardened:

Are you so upright you can't be bent

if it comes to blows

Are you so sure you won't be crawling

If not for the good why risk falling

Why risk falling

If everything you think you know

Makes your life unbearable

Would you change?

Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow

And hard times come to bring you down

Would you change?

Would you change?

I'm changing now, Tracy, in ways I couldn't then. I hope the same is true for my ex, because I'm really hoping we're both capable of a more lighted, more spacious, and yeah, more soothing kind of love with our new partners...