So I'm listening to Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know, which I love. This song just speaks to me. But there's a reason that it speaks to me, presumably because it's about some unhappy relationship that has ended abruptly. All of us have had one of those, it's not like I'm special in that regard.
But then I got to thinking about it, and I'm trying to decide if I consider the two serious boyfriends I've had in my life as merely people I used to know. As many angry feelings I harbor towards them and myself following our relationships, I do firmly believe I wouldn't be the person I am today without them. So how can they be reduced to people I just used to know? But to give them any more significance feels a bit traiterous to my current happy self, who had to endure years and years of mind fucking torture just to come out on the other side half put together and in need of serious therapy.
As I write this, the song is playing in the background. And perhaps what is truest about the song is that although the words go on and on about the exes basically cutting each other off and not needing each other anymore, the emotions behind the words tell a different story. There is pain and regret and longing. And I think those are the truer feelings, masked by apathy and anger.
I don't think relationships like that can be downplayed as just acquaintenances. There is too much history and emotion and time put into them. Entire years of lives go into trying to make them work. Friendships are lost, professions are put to the side, lifelong dreams are stalled ... all in favor of trying to make some relationship work. But that person - there was a reason why you let that happen. There was a reason you allowed yourself to neglect one person over another. There was a reason you thought it was okay to put more time into another person than yourself. You loved that person. If love can be reduced to just something you once had with someone you used to know, we are all just sort of shells aren't we?
I don't have any particular desire to see either of these two men again, or talk to them, or be friends with them on Facebook. Neither of them were very nice to me in the end and my pride prohibits me from publicly admitting that even a tiny part of me still has any sort of positive feelings toward either of them. But that also has a lot to do with the fact that I acknowledge just how important they were to me once. I could never honestly tell my husband that one of them was just somebody I used to know. So it isn't that I don't care because they're just random people to me, it's that I don't want to care. Because what I have going on now is so way better than what I ever had going on with them, that it's not worth it to me to re-open that window.
So even though I still love the song, I see it as a sort of admission that these sort of people could never be someone you just knew once. This song is the story of a person, or two people perhaps, who are desperately trying to convince themselves that they can minimize their relationships to the point where they never really mattered in the first place.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
What Life Makes You
Too often, I go through life believing that the personalities and idiosyncracies of the people I meet are simply the way those people are and always have been. I forget that we change and evolve into an ultimate person who emerges at the end of our life = the culmination of all the experiences we have endured, suffered, and enjoyed over the years. But this, of course, is what happens.
Life can be a great big pile of steaming dog shit - just sayin' - and thus begins the unfair and repeated beatdown we are all destined to endure throughout our lives. We start out happy and naive, looking forward to a fair and equitable distribution of happiness and fortune that will befall us throughout the expanse of our reasonably long lives. We expect that good things will happen to us as long as we are good. We treat others as we would like to be treated. We love our family and are faithful to our partners. In short, we expect that if we work hard and act nice we will be favored. But who will favor us? There is no one there to save us. It is only the individual ... the individual who is in control of nothing... as it turns out.
And so our lives take twists and turns that are unexpected and unseemly. Great big gaping holes in the road present themselves as obstacles that we can't imagine clearing. Life throws fire bombs and poison arrows at us. Life is out to get us.
Surely this is how we must all feel at points. But we must remember to perservere. For every bullshit block in the road, there are two rest stops with your name on them serving free hugs and happiness. I have never been a particularly faithful person. But I believe in life. I believe in waiting for the good parts, and there are always good parts. Within the shadow of a horrific nightmare, there is a sparkle that shines for you - and that sparkle, as long as you wait for it, will grow into a firework - a splendid display of all the good in your life, of all the good you have been waiting for. Things really do get better. It WILL get better. It MUST get better.
Allow your life to take the path it will. Find out what your life will make of you. And remember that you can't make a cake without the right ingredients - all that life will make of you is composed of parts you already have. You will be, you already are ... Strong. Resilient. Worthy.
Life can be a great big pile of steaming dog shit - just sayin' - and thus begins the unfair and repeated beatdown we are all destined to endure throughout our lives. We start out happy and naive, looking forward to a fair and equitable distribution of happiness and fortune that will befall us throughout the expanse of our reasonably long lives. We expect that good things will happen to us as long as we are good. We treat others as we would like to be treated. We love our family and are faithful to our partners. In short, we expect that if we work hard and act nice we will be favored. But who will favor us? There is no one there to save us. It is only the individual ... the individual who is in control of nothing... as it turns out.
And so our lives take twists and turns that are unexpected and unseemly. Great big gaping holes in the road present themselves as obstacles that we can't imagine clearing. Life throws fire bombs and poison arrows at us. Life is out to get us.
Surely this is how we must all feel at points. But we must remember to perservere. For every bullshit block in the road, there are two rest stops with your name on them serving free hugs and happiness. I have never been a particularly faithful person. But I believe in life. I believe in waiting for the good parts, and there are always good parts. Within the shadow of a horrific nightmare, there is a sparkle that shines for you - and that sparkle, as long as you wait for it, will grow into a firework - a splendid display of all the good in your life, of all the good you have been waiting for. Things really do get better. It WILL get better. It MUST get better.
Allow your life to take the path it will. Find out what your life will make of you. And remember that you can't make a cake without the right ingredients - all that life will make of you is composed of parts you already have. You will be, you already are ... Strong. Resilient. Worthy.
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