Someone Like You

Got a sweet and kinda sad email from my faraway friend (and first love) with a link to this heartbreaker of a song. He said he cried when he heard it -- and sure enough, when I fired it up, I cried too. Hard. I felt sad for a number of reasons. One because I don't really think it works that way:

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you,

I wish nothing but the best for you, too,

Don't forget me, I beg,

I remember you said,

"Sometimes it lasts in love,

But sometimes it hurts instead"

Indeed it does sometimes hurt instead -- but I don't think that you ever find someone like someone you've loved. Not really. I mean sure, some qualities I found attractive about him were qualities I continued to seek in future lovers. But mostly, I don't feel like it works that way, which is one reason why this song makes me sad.

The thing I miss most about him is also a feeling he inspired in me that first summer -- and still did when I saw him last summer -- carefree, helpless laughter:

You know how the time flies,

Only yesterday was the time of our lives,

We were born and raised in a summer haze,

Bound by the surprise of our glory days,

That makes me wonder though, too, if part of what makes me so sad is that I don't seem to have access to that girl on my own. Maybe there's something else I can do to get her back? Because as much as I love that girl and the man who brings her out, it was super clear to me last summer that he doesn't have what I need as a woman these days: someone with much more ready access to and comfort with feelings of the heart.

Perhaps the biggest tears were for that girl, who lost her love and shut down afterward for a long, long time to protect herself from feeling that again:

Nothing compares,

No worries or cares,

Regrets and mistakes, they're memories made,

Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you,

I wish nothing but the best for you,

Don't forget me, I beg,

I remember you said,

"Sometimes it lasts in love,

But sometimes it hurts instead"

It does still hurt sometimes, and that sort of sucks, but I feel good about these three truths:

1) He's never going to forget me, or I him;

2) I'm now capable of opening my heart and, mostly, keeping it open;

3) I'm with someone now who is capable of loving me and of making room for those who will always be important to me, having shaped, as Adele says in her introduction to the video, the woman I am today.