The Sountrack

Everyone, at some point or another, has imagined a soundtrack to their life, or a portion of their life. This is my break-up mix. It is a clichéd conceit, for a clichéd experience. But, hopefully, it will help get it out of my system…

This is a little heavy on the Missy Higgins. I first heard her at a concert a month or two ago. I was floored. So young. Yet so many songs. To me, about me, for me. She has become my poet! I have a poet!

Where I Stood (Missy Higgins)

I don’t know what I’ve done, or if I like what I’ve begun. But something told me to run, and honey, you know me – it’s all or none…. I don’t know who I am, who I am without you, all I know is that I should

At the beginning, it struck me how all of your stories from your past talked about an unknown ‘we.’ And I felt an unfamiliar pang of jealousy, at this unassailable, inaccessible ‘we.’ And then I became the ‘we.’ And now there is another ‘we.’ Although to those who don’t know better, the ‘we’s are all interchangeable... But there has never been an ‘I.’ Never a Name-and- I. Only ‘we,’ no matter who it is. And, in this, it is less that you are not able to function on your own, but that you don’t see those others as having their own identity. Only as a they are a part of the being that is you.

You have such a strong personality, are so opinionated, you attract those who feel like they are strong enough to hold their own, who only need a little guidance in life’s big picture. Wanting to relax into your strength, because it is so exhausting to do it all on our own. Only we learn too late that you are only forceful about the little things, the details: the inclinations that give us our personality, the common threads running through our life experience. And we are left with a weakened, an undermined, sense of self. And I am left with nothing but a dependence and reliance on the importance of ‘love’ to get me through all, and give my life meaning.

Fidelity (Regina Spektor)

You gave this to me. Told me it reminded you of me. I listened. I cried. I listened more. I hated myself. My ex-boyfriend gives me what he thinks should be my theme song, for our breakup, from my perspective. This spoke to me, gave words, a song, to my heartbreak. Felt like if only I had been more, been there more, it would have… Then I started thinking, Wait! This isn’t just me; this is you, too. You don’t know what it means to love someone, won’t admit that it requires work, a constant renewal of a commitment, explicit, implicit. It doesn’t have to be hard, per se, but it does require work. Your version of love is teenage.

We heard this song again, randomly, some months ago. The last day I saw you in person. I looked at you, significantly. You say, I am so tired of this song! It is overplayed! A gut jab and twist. Yes, of course this is no longer your song. Our song. Pathetic though it is.

It breaks my heart…

All for Believing (Missy Higgins)

I’m all for believing, if you can reveal the true colors within… I need to find the key to let me in, into your heart, to find your soul…. I believe in what I see, and, baby, we were meant to be. Trust in me.

Sometimes, I feel like I believe you to be a better person than you believe yourself to be, than you want the responsibility of being. It is so much easier to be a bad person, a shallow person, an irresponsible person. Have others think that. You date these amazing women, genuinely ‘good’ people, who by very virtue of their goodness, and belief in you, can validate you as a person. Only you require them to say it for you. You will never take ownership for, the responsibility of, being ‘good.’ And you are certainly now doing your best to prove me wrong, and you right, all along.

Just Like the Moon (Brett Dennen)

And sometimes, sometimes, I only get a sliver of ya, but I’m hoping, I’m hoping for a full moon tonight…

A gift from another person. From his perspective, not presuming to determine mine. I am his heartbreak. A gift in the midst of a realization, of where I am, and where I am not. I am sorry. You are amazing for understanding. For doing your best to understand. To be there for me when I am there. Although not waiting for me, exactly, just being there.

Ten Days (Missy Higgins)

So we’ve put an end to it this time: I’m no longer yours and you’re no longer mine… And it’s been ten days without you in my reach, and the only time I’ve touched you is in my sleep. But time has changed nothing at all. You’re still the only one that feels like home. I’ve tried cutting the ropes, and I let you go. But you’re still the only one that feels like home.

Or six months, nine months… longer…

Nearly 24 hours a day, almost 365 days a year, for close to four years… It doesn’t disappear quickly. It’s not like we fell out of love. Just that I admitted we want different things from life, see the value of life differently, need different things, different amounts, to feel fulfilled, safe, satisfied. And you never admitted any such thing. Only stuck around until you found someone else.

So tell me, did you really think… Oh tell me, did you really think I had gone when you couldn't see me anymore?

Please Read the Letter (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss)

Can it get any plainer than this?

Ah, the infamous letter. What I thought was my blunt, to the point, unable to be ignored, declaration of my love for you, and my plea (Yes, I begged) to know where you stood, so that I could figure out my life. Whether I should try to discover what I needed in myself to be able to come back to you, to us, or if I should, really and finally, just move on.

And, not only did you not respond, you lost the letter.

Unbroken (Missy Higgins)

And you will never, no, you will never see with virgin eyes again. ‘Cause this is the day when everything changes, and your world stops turning.

There were phone calls, emails, letters, face-to-face conversations, hotel rooms, promises, and all I hear, all I am told, is I love you, let us make plans to meet up. And then, finally, after all that, weeks, months later, you say, I have been getting into a relationship. It is probably less than you think, but more than I am telling you. (Don’t worry. I know. That will change.) You set me up, and then knocked my legs out from under me, knocked the breath out of me. Left me nothing on which to stand. And then walked away. No looking backwards. No remorse. No regret.

This is my Neil LaBute moment.

100 Around the Bends (Missy Higgins)

…and I will pretend that feeling rage is feeling real…

I finally understand now how you can make someone so angry at you that they want to jump out of your speeding car.

I want to beat you, break all your bones, pound your face into a purple swollen mass, pour oil over everything you own, rip up every photo I have from our time together, delete every email between us, close my email accounts, change my phone number, never again do any of the things we ever did together, write off every person we knew who would mention you to me, or think not to mention you to me. I am ashamed of every moment that I loved you and foolishly thought your love for me meant something. But I am not strong enough to erase completely four years of my life. If I did, there would be a void too big for me to go on.

… you were everything, for a little while. But I broke it… didn’t I?

You say you want to be friends, yet you do nothing to deserve my friendship. Never allow me to justify considering you a friend if I want to preserve any shred of self-respect.

You lied to me, repeatedly, about those things which ‘friends’ would not feel it necessary to lie.

You hid conversations from me when you were going to meet up with someone after we parted ways for the night, someone with whom everyone, excepting yourself, thought ‘something’ was going on. Fine, but if we are merely ‘friends,’ what is the point?

You promised me a year ago, at my request, that you would let me know if you started a relationship with someone, before someone else gossiped to me about it. You didn’t.

You attacked me without thinking in regards to a situation about which you knew only one side and did not even pause to consider that I would have a justifiable perspective. You abandoned any sense of thought that I was a person you trusted. A person you (had once) valued.

You entered into the giddy newness of a relationship, found someone else to spend time with, travel with, be entertained by, sleep with. And like a totally different story, by a totally different author, I no longer exist as a person. My own identity, myself as my own entity, has vanished. Feelings, heartbreak, repercussions.

You will not tell me what is going on in your life if it involves your new relationship. Although it is clear that the things you aren’t telling me involve that. So what? I am not asking how many times you have sex a day! I don’t want to know!! I am asking you where you are, what you are doing, where you are going.

You promised, even at the end, you would always be there for me when I needed you. Yet when I call, when I write and tell you I do, a conversation, anything real, you don’t answer. Or make excuses about how now is not a good time. And that is the last I hear.

You dangle teasers of friendship out to me, yet keep knowledge of you hidden from me like it is the last power you have over me. You offer light emails, offers of belated presents. All I can feel is rage and bewilderment. How can you possibly not understand how utterly you have let me down?!?!? You give a kernel of hope that you have something good to offer me, yet never follow with the proof. You vanish at the suggestion of a conversation in person. I phrase things ‘wrongly’ in an email, too personally (‘Where are you?’), too accusingly, too angrily, with too much judgment, say anything more than nothing, and you disappear. Don’t respond. Forget about the emails as if they had never been received. I would rather an honest conversation than a kite! How absurd that there is a reality in which to write that.

I keep trying, ‘one last time,’ to reach out to you, ask you to talk to me, help me understand how you could have done this to me, show me your perspective so I don’t think you are as heartless as every single sign points to your being. But doing that requires me to swallow my sense of pride at how I could be so rejected so many times (how dense? how masochistic am I?), and still keep reaching out. When you have made it so perfectly clear that you will not respond.

Yet I foolishly, naively – almost inconceivably – feel that one face-to-face conversation would change everything. That, in person, I could shame you into not lying to me. That if you saw me and remembered who I was you would offer me something real again, something genuine.

So I can reclaim our years together.

…but feeling rage ain’t feeling real.

Peachy (Missy Higgins)

It’s not my fault, it can’t be my fault, that you speak to me the way you do. Now I’m split in two, I’m half me and half you, but I hate us both. Don’t you? No, of course you don’t, of course you don’t. You say life is peachy without me.

* * *

“ ‘The word careless is the key here,’ she said. ‘Remember when Nick reproaches Jordan for her careless driving and she responds lightly that even if she is careless, she counts on other people being careful? Careless is the first adjective that comes to mind when describing the rich in this novel. The dream they embody is an alloyed dream that destroys whoever tries to get close to it.’”

“‘Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels – the greatest sin is to be blind to others’ problems and pain. Not seeing them means denying their existence.’”

From Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

* * *

At the heart of it, you have no empathy. Your callous indifference to the results of your actions, or inactions, is not so much a conscious choice, but an inability to see even the smallest sliver of the world from anything other than your own narrow perspective. It is what makes you so terrible at communication. (I used to always joke that my role was to communicate for you to those around.) It is what can allow you to run around in the middle of the night screaming and drunk off of cheap whiskey at a campsite in a National Park, a place to which people retreat to escape the noise of the world, when the situation in reverse would piss you off beyond consolation.

You have no empathy, and I have an excess of it. Which increased as I compensated for both of us, making sure I wasn’t complicit in the sin, until I was unable to function, act with resolution, without second-guessing whether I was doing the right thing, making us both ‘good’ enough. Thoughtful enough. Obsessing over whether we were taking too much advantage of the people around us.

We made a sickly perfect, perfectly sickly couple: you have much higher standards for other people than for yourself, while I have much higher standards for myself than others. With the result that we both expected a lot from me, while your only responsibility was to show up. You used to try and guilt me, last year, after we broke up, into dropping everything to spend time with you when you were in town. And now, in reverse, you can’t even respond to an email.

Let You Down (Dave Matthews Band)

I let you down… forgive me.

* * *

All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

From A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

* * *

This is my fantasy world. The final request I have for you. What I could only ask you in person. But you never gave me the chance. I feel so naïve just writing it, thinking it is something I could ask, thinking it is something you could understand.

I want you to tell me, Yes, I did a really shitty thing to you. I’m sorry.

That’s it.

But I don’t even think you believe you did anything wrong. If you have ever stopped to think about it… So I have to find another way to move on.

Good Man (Josh Ritter)

Babe, we both had dry spells, hard times, and bad lands. I’m a good man for ya. I’m a good man.

Another gift. A light in the darkness. Timing is everything, and this is pretty shitty. But it is only getting better. In the beginning, I thought, I don’t deserve someone as understanding as you. You have helped me get to, Yes, you deserve me. Although I know that you deserve all of me. And that I can’t offer right now. But, however it winds up, I am lucky you have come into my life.

Be OK (Ingrid Michaelson)

I just want to be OK… I just want to be OK today… I just want to feel something today….

Open me up and you will see I am a gallery of broken hearts. I’m beyond repair, let me be, and give me back my broken parts…

I just want to know today… know that maybe I will be okay.