Broken Hearted Love Songs…
I love them. All of them. Country. Pop. Rock. Doesn’t matter. If there is a twisted, broken, lamenting song that sings about the crushing devastation heartbreak brings, count me in. I love them all. Always have.
When I was younger, I used to collect son lyrics and write them down like poetry. I kept journals of them. Somehow the fact that someone else felt the way I did so often was comforting. Now most of the time I didn’t have actual heartbreaking experience as a kid. I mean, I am pretty sure I started this behavior at like 9 or 10. But I could definitely feel the feelings. And I wanted the experiences that brought about heartbreak and loss. I mean, sure, I was really hoping to avoid those particular feelings. But the poignancy and depth of feeling I was all in for.
Well, at least that is what I thought I was in for.
Further truth?
I also loved love songs for the same reason. And I am sure this provided some balance to my penchant for loving songs about love and loss. I have always been preoccupied with love and all its accoutrements. Fascinated really.
I was walking home from the gym yesterday, listening to yet another broken hearted fucked up relationship song and realized that while these are my absolute favorites, I love them as much as I do because they mirror so much of my own personal experience. There has been a lot of loving and there has also been a lot of loss.
And then it occurred to me that the reasons these songs appeal so much to me is because I have had so many twisted and fucked up relationships. And for some reason, that wounded me. Suddenly my life long interest in being pulled toward the sad and melancholy made so much more sense. These songs supported all the complicated and real feelings I have had about loving and then losing. Even when it was largely theoretical.
What is interesting though is that while my past is littered with relational endings, I have been the one to initiate most of those endings. Almost without fail. Lane was the exception. He broke me in new and horrific ways. But in truth, I have been the one to break my heart far more often than the men I have dated. I am always leaving in search of something better, more fulfilling, less demanding, or more to what I think I want. It never occurred to me until yesterday that I was always the one exiting, causing the relational ending.
Now, truth be told, I was leaving because all of my efforts to stay and have that relationshop be something better, more fulfilling or life affirming had failed. So I was the one to leave the dissatisfying relational fuck up. But let me tell you, I always left feeling absolutely devastated about the leaving. Oh sure, there were times in my life when I appeared to skip out and on, but there was always a backstory I kept to myself, the kind of backstory that amazing songs about heartbreak and mental illness are written.
Looking back I see how I ended up here. Really I do. And while a great majority of my relational past is regrettable, I really do not think I could have done it any other way. I am sure also that had I not gotten sober when I did and had the mother I have, I could have ended up way worse off. While I have not been lucky in love, I could have been fucked up in this department worse, which is scary to me if it isn’t to you.
I write this morning from my relational crisis point once more. Just having survived the worst relationship in all the history of my relationships. And when I say survived, I really do mean it that dramatically. It is amazing to me how much we give up, we put out and ignore because we love someone, so often we do this for a person that isn’t capable of love or just doesn’t love us. I have confused using for love far more often than I would like to admit. My ego is freaking the fuck out right now as I write this, screaming in my head “SHUT THE FUCK UP! WE WERE NOT USED!!!” But, um, yes, yes we were.
And we participated in our own subrogation. Repeatedly. And that smarts, my ego and my soul. How could I end up here? I mean it is one thing to say, “it could have been worse, I could have married him!” But it really doesn’t help me all that much when I realize the very many ways this whole debacle could have ended up worse…it still breaks my heart that not only did he not love me, I apparently didn’t love me either.
And perhaps that is what I love about the fucked up relationship songs the most, the relating I do to the implicit underscoring of how much someone else might have done you wrong, but how much you participated in this whole affair. How much we are the ones that let ourselves down the most. How so often we see the gross and misaligned underpinnings of a love that is fraught with troubles, pains and addictions. And we go on loving anyway. Most others can see it, but this other gives us just enough of what we really want to keep us coming back. Often it is sex, but for me it wasn’t that at all. It was this idea, this idea that he saw me and loved me and was going to one day in the magical future show up for me the way he promised to in the beginning. Breadcrumming me with little drips and drabs of what I thought was a burgeoning love story…but what was really more of a diabolical plot to provide for himself.
Most of my relationships feel like a bait and switch. I think I am getting one thing, when in fact, I get something else all together. Repeatedly. Again, still. FUCK!
But wait, no, not again, still. I am done. This last love gone wrong, the love that I felt being poured over someone who was cruel, opportunistic and somewhat sadistic is all done for me. I have learned this lesson and I will not ever do this again. How do I know? This is the kind of pain that forces you to rearrange yourself internally. Everything for me is seen with a new pair of glasses, reframing the entire relationship with the sight producing lens of hindsight. I see where I went wrong. And I own it. All of this mess only happened because I repeatedly let it. I needed to believe in a story he was all too willing to sell me. And I wanted that story to be true so much that I overlooked and failed to hold him accountable when his participation in that story failed to measure up.
I realize now, love doesn’t happen overnight from a three hour conversation in a parking lot. Love while being relatively simple and straightforward (we take care of the things and people we love, we don’t hurt them intentionally) when misdirected, bears a great deal of weight, the kind that will pull you under and drown you for good.
And honestly I was almost there. The amount of things that I put up with, the lies and dishonesties, the scamming and betrayals. I could never prove them up. And somehow I let my inability to prove his horrific behavior that always suspected but could never absolutely prove, I allowed myself to continue to move forward in something that never failed to make me feel just awful.
And that to me is what most fucked up, brokenhearted love songs are really about. The death of possibility. And for me, that has gotten me in more trouble than anything else in my life, this incessant belief that there is more potential in him or me than really exists.
So in the immortal words of Shawn Colvin (an official expert in love gone wrong) I reiterate an ancient but abiding truth, “you do not have to drag me down, I descend.” One of the best fucking song lyrics of all time.
And this blog would not be complete without a nod to the priestess of fucked up broken heart love songs, Aimee Mann. To her I grant the following life long appreciation for saving my heart and healing me with words that have always resonated with her pain, her loss and her abject heartbreak…
It’s not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though
By now you know
It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
’Til you wise up
You’re sure
There’s a cure
And you have finally found it
You think
One drink
Will shrink you ’til you’re underground
And living down
But it’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
’Til you wise up
Prepare a list of what you need
Before you sign away the deed
’Cause it’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
’Til you wise up
No, it’s not going to stop
’Til you wise up
No, it’s not going to stop
So just, give up
And so I have. Praying always that I have finally, and indeed wised up, so that it can please, blessedly and full of mercy, fucking stop.
For good.
Please.
