White Flag

Heard this one from Dido in my car this afternoon and I had the experience of marking a change in myself through my response to a song.

There was a time in my life when I often listened to it on repeat -- both inside and outside my head. It was after I'd split up with my husband and reconnected (by phone and email) with my first love. These lyrics describe sort of a combo of what I felt then and what I'd felt periodically over the years while we were both in serious relationships with other people:

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,

Or tell you that.

But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it

where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder

Or return to where we were

I will go down with this ship

And I won't put my hands up and surrender

There will be no white flag above my door

I'm in love and always will be

I even remember emailing him the lyrics, and I remember his response, which I think came in a phone call, though I wouldn't swear it, but I can hear him saying it: "Yes, the lyrics are apt." And then he went on to say that he didn't particularly like Dido and well, to make a long story (that has already been chronicled in this blog) short, I think I did want to return to where we were, and when we finally saw each other again last summer, we did, in a lot of ways. But not in all the ways, and that mostly has to do with the fact that the girl I was when we fell in love has grown up and changed in a lot of productive ways that just really make it impossible, and undesirable, to go back to that space.

So today when I heard it, I thought about what it used to bring up for me, and I thought how now it brings up feelings about my new(ish) love, and the cataclysmic shift in me that was required to get to where I am with him now, which is feeling, believing, thinking, hoping we're in love and always will be...