Give You My Lovin

It was nice being away, but not quite what I expected. Not a definitive end to this period of my life, as I'd hoped. Not a new beginning. Just me, experiencing some moments of calm, some moments of exhilaration, and some (ok, a lot of) moments of grief. I'm reading a book called "How to Survive the Loss of a Love" and one of the things it says is that often one loss causes a person to have to deal with other, ungrieved losses, and I think that's true for me. Lots of old stuff is coming up, as I alluded to yesterday.

I'm trying, in the midst of all of this, to be gentle with myself. I'm trying not to spend too much time wondering whether or why I "stayed overlong" -- beyond the point where a person who was realistically looking at the evidence would have concluded that my needs weren't going to be met in that relationship. When I look at it like a learning experience, I try to think about how I'll (try to) behave differently next time.

I slept late today, my body sore and tired from my running and biking this weekend. After I woke, I stayed in bed listening to Pandora for a while, and this song came on:

Give you my lovin seven days a week
I'll be your honey if you'll be sweet
I know I'm the only one for you
I know that you think this is not true

Man says it's rainin', rainin' outside
I'll be out there in a little while
Cause you see, rain reminds me of you
And everything has turned to you

See you in places, I'm followin' you
You'll be upstairs, and I'll be there too
Everywhere you go I will follow
I know it won't be the same tomorrow

People give me warnings, Stay away from you
They say you'll hurt me, I don't think that's true
Discomfort arouses when I speak of you
As if you been sayin' somethin' bad about me

When I see you I wanna kiss you
But I know that ain't right so I'd ask if I can hold you
Oh babe, I need you so bad
Oh babe, I only wanna make you glad

And it wasn't really that every single lyric fit my situation -- more that the feeling of the song did -- and that what I felt like it was expressing overall cuts to the heart of what I felt and potentially learned from my last relationship.

I wanted nothing more than to give him my lovin seven days a week, and it was the first time I'd ever really felt that way about anyone, partly because he was so awesome and partly because it was the first time I had so much of myself to give. So I reveled in the giving, not paying too much attention to how much of himself he had to give to me, except at the moments when it was glaringly obvious that he didn't have as much as he or I would have liked.

I guess it's even possible that I chose him for that reason -- because I still wasn't ready to be as vulnerable as one needs to be to fully receive the seven days a week lovin Mazzy describes. I don't think I was ready, at the beginning of our relationship, but I got there, during it, and I kept thinking he'd get there too.

Who knows? Maybe someday he will. But he didn't get there while we were together, and that's what I'm continuing to grieve....