Love's Life Lessons

I’m still on a Nickelback listening spree...their new album is awesome!! This song can be heard so many different ways with so many different ears depending on where you are in your life. I hear so many different stages of my own love losses when I listen to it, but someone else who has been to the brink of a love loss and brought it back on course hears a totally different song.

“You call to me, and I fall at your feet
How could anyone ask for more?”

I used to think this was my ultimate expression of love...that if I was willing both literally and figuratively to fall at someone’s feet it meant I loved them. Yes, it might mean I love them, but it just as often might mean I was not loving me, and making good choices for myself.

“But if there’s a pill to help me forget,
God knows I haven’t found it yet,
But I’m dying to, God I’m trying to”

I think this one is pretty self explanatory, no? Insert your own drugs of choice here...mine happened to be vodka and certain legal pills used in decidedly illegal ways. The secret you have to eventually figure out for yourself is that they rarely dull the ache for more than a few hours at a time, and they NEVER bring about the amnesia that you seek.

“Can’t see the silver lining, from down here on the floor
And I just keep on trying, but I don’t know what for”

I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the 41 years of my existence wallowing in pain and self pity down on the floor; an angle from which it is rather difficult to see the entire room or the lamp or the lampshade for that matter, or an outstretched arm offering you a hand up off the floor.

“Cause trying not to love you, only goes so far
Trying not to need you is tearing me apart.”

In the end what I have learned is that while trying not to love you DOES only go so far, it is possible to stop needing you. Once I’ve done that what I’m left with is just the warm glow of love minus the bitter longing of need. What I’m left with are the fond, sexy memories that made me fall in love to begin with no longer framed with the bewildered emptiness of an unfulfilled need. What I have learned is that nothing and no one outside of me can fulfill any perceived need I have. Happiness comes from within, NEVER from my current life circumstances which are ever changing.

When I have unwrapped the need from the love... I can step back from the relationship and say to myself, “Damn, that hurt a lot, but what a crazy, fun ride it was.” When I no longer need you, but still love you, I can appreciate the lessons you came into my life to help me learn, and be glad it was you I chose to learn them from.