The Promise

Listening to Spotify on my Wonderboom on a rainy Sunday, and what to my wondering ears should appear but this gorgeous number:

If you wait for me
Then I'll come for you
Although I've traveled far
I always hold a place for you in my heart

If you think of me
If you miss me once in awhile
Then I'll return to you
I'll return and fill that space in your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting

If you dream of me
Like I dream of you
In a place that's warm and dark
In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting

I've longed for you
And I have desired
To see your face your smile
To be with you wherever you are

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
Please say you'll be waiting

Together again
It would feel so good to be
In your arms
Where all my journeys end
If you can make a promise
If it's one that you can keep
I vow to come for you
If you wait for me

And say you'll hold
A place for me
In your heart

A place for me in your heart
A place for me in your heart
A place for me in your heart

I have no doubt there is a place for me in the New Englander's heart, and for him in mine. There will always be a place.

For me though, it's not about waiting, or contemplating getting back together.

It's about me doing the work of forgiveness, to face the gargantuan disappointment I feel about our romantic relationship ending and the reasons for that, and becoming willing to let that go.

I'm not ready yet, but I am doing the work, and I will get there...

Be Careful of My Heart

I got a sweet email from an old friend and reader of my blog who suggested that this song would be apropos right now, and I reckon she's right:

You and your sweet smile
You and all your tantalizing ways
You and your honey lips
You and all the sweet things that they say
You and your wild wild ways
One day you just up and walked away
Oh you left me hurting

Yeah he did.

But I can forgive you for that now
You taught me something
Something took me half my life to learn
When you give all yourself away
Just tell them to be careful of your heart

I can forgive him, especially since I feel we both gained something from him leaving, but I am gonna need him to listen up to Tracy's wise words:

Be careful of my heart, heart
Be careful of this heart of mine
Be careful of my heart, heart
It just might break and send some splinters flying
Be careful of my heart, heart
Be careful

Please...

This Time

I was talking to a friend last night who is also in this in-between space -- kind of out there again -- she'd like to be -- but also still dealing with all the feelings that come with the dissolution of a marriage.

It's difficult, when things don't go our way with one love, not to close ranks around the heart in order to protect it the next time around, just like Tracy's singing about in this song:

This time
I won't show I'm vulnerable
This time
I won't give in first
This time
I will hold out with my love
This time
I will not be hurt

I'm gonna love myself
More than anyone else
I'm gonna treat me right
I'm gonna make you say
That you love me first
And you'll be the one with the most to lose tonight
This time

This time
I won't let my emotions rule my life
This time
I'm gonna keep my heart locked safe inside
This time
I'm gonna be my own best friend
This time
I'm gonna be the one

Methinks some of her vows are healthy, others not so much. In my last relationship, I can honestly say that I let emotions rule longer than really made sense if I were evaluating what I was being offered in that relationship versus what I was getting.

I loved him truly, madly, deeply, and knew that he felt the same about me, only he wasn't prepared to do with that love what I wanted to do with it: treasure it, protect it, nurture it, prioritize it, keep it. I knew that, in my head, but I let my heart, which stubbornly chose to focus only on the madly in love part, rule for as long as he was here with me, and even for a few weeks after he was gone.

I try to have compassion for both of us, to know that we were where we needed to be while we were there, but sometimes that's easier to do than others.

In any case, this time, I won't keep my heart locked safe inside -- I know that letting myself be vulnerable is a huge part of what made my last love so significant for me -- but I will allow my brain to check in every so often and ask how it's going. I will be my own best friend, but I'll talk to my other best friend too, and try to really listen to what we're both saying. And if I know something's not quite right, I'll have the guts to do something about it.

Yep, Tracy, this time, I'm gonna be the one. And so is my friend. With just the right man for each of us.

I just know it...

For My Lover

It's not completely a done deal, but it's looking like my man is going to stick it out in the Midwest with me, mountains or no mountains, while my primary job on this Earth -- raising my babies -- is still my privilege.

Speaking of privileged, I sure feel that way about having found such a fabulous partner in so many aspects of this life, and I don't take the sacrifice he made to move out here lightly, either. We were joking around the other day, and I was explaining how when my best friend had cancer, her sister said in a moment of anger: "motherhood is my cancer!"

"Wisconsin is your cancer!" I said, and we laughed. And then my internal ipod pulled up this classic from Tracy Chapman about the things that people endure for love:

Two weeks in a Virginia jail
For my lover for my lover
Twenty thousand dollar bail
For my lover for my lover

And everybody thinks
That I'me the fool
But they don't get
Any love from you
The things we won't do for love

I'd climb a mountain if I had to
And risk my life so I could have you
You, you, you...

Everyday I'm psychoanalyzed
For my lover for my lover
They dope me up and I tell them lies
For my lover for my lover

I follow my heart
And leave my head to ponder
Deep in this love
No man can shake

I follow my heart
And leave my mind to wonder
Is this love worth
The sacrifices I make

I know from time to time, his mind is going to wonder the same thing. Good thing his heart never wavers...

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...

Baby Can I Hold You Tonight

Good old ipod shuffle -- she always knows what to spin -- and yesterday when Tracy started to sing:

Sorry
Is all that you can't say
Years gone by and still
Words don't come easily
Like sorry
Like sorry

Forgive me
Is all that you can't say
Years gone by and still
Words don't come easily
Like forgive me
Forgive me

But you can say baby
Baby can I hold you tonight
Maybe if I'd told you the right words
At the right time
You'd be mine

I started to cry. Why, you ask? When just yesterday I was rocking the No Woman No Cry? Because this is one of the many songs tied up in those feelings I had for so long about wishing that things were different for me and my overseas visitor. So I allowed myself to shed a few tears on the bed while he dug through old photographs, and then I picked myself up off the bed and went about my morning.

At dinner last night, we talked about our hopes and dreams in terms of past and future loves. When he talked about words not coming easily and ways he protects himself, he was able to say "because that's just how I am." The old me, attached to a particular outcome, would've bristled and needed to try to change that about him. Instead I said "This is the great thing about us being friends now. I don't need to try to make you my man, I can just let you be who you are."

Ideally, I wouldn't ever have needed to change people to make them my man, but I really haven't dwelt in the realm of the ideal as far as love and romance are concerned. And I don't think that's uncommon -- a couple of nights ago we were out with a friend of mine and we all decided we've never had both feet in a relationship, and we're all pushing 40.

Here's to a new era, leaving behind the emotional and physical reticence, and wholeheartedly embracing love...

Mountains of Things

This morning my ipod fired this one up -- and it seemed somewhat in keeping with the theme from yesterday -- that it isn't stuff that matters. It's really easy to get swept up in thinking that it is.

I also chose this song today because I am striving for a bit more balance, as I mark my days, both with music and with my thoughts and actions. And while lamenting the loss of love, being in love, or longing for love is really important, and really big, it isn't the only reason I'm here, and it isn't the only thing I care about. I'm also here to help, as Tracy so eloquently puts it, "those whose sole misfortune is having mountains of nothing at birth."

Here's a couple of versions of this powerful number on youtube -- they both have their pluses and minuses. I like this live version because you can really get a sense of her quiet strength, dignity and earnestness. But it's kind of hard to hear her sing. I like this version because you can really hear her belt it out. I also like that in the comments section for this version, someone says that they think the two greatest debut albums of all time are Tracy Chapman's and Guns 'n Roses Appetite for Destruction. I have to agree that they are both pretty damn great, and I love that as human beings, we have the luxury of grouping two beings like Tracy and Axl together and enjoying both for who they are and what they each bring.

Now if we can just figure out how to do that as a society overall, and not just with entertainers and athletes...