SOML ~ If You Build Your Castle on Sand AND BOTB Results

I've not been "on the ball" with regard to getting my results tabulated and published for Battle of the Bands. Ah well. I think, in this particular case, I could see the vote sliding solidly towards Dylan and the battle lost all its fire. And I kinda lost interest. I suspect it's a bit like watching a horse race. When the horses are neck and neck, it's riveting. When one takes a solid lead and the other has no chance of catching up, well everyone makes a beeline for their car hoping to not get caught in the traffic. So, in the beginning it was a vote for Dylan and then a vote for Mann and then a vote for Dylan and then vote for Mann. It went on like that for the first ten comments. And then the votes for Dylan started piling up and up and up and up. I got in my car and left the lot. And there you go. hahahaha.

But, all and still, I think this was a good battle. The song was good. The variation was good. Participation was good. Comments were good. It was all good. The voting wasn't as close as I like, but you don't get everything you want!

In the end, the tally looked like this for You Angel You:

Bob Dylan: 17 votes (including mine)
Manfred Mann: 7

I realize I haven't done a soundtrack post in a while. I also realize I'm going to be packing up (literally this time) and leaving for camp soon. Last time I posted I was in NYC, but really close to packing that up in order to move to Savannah, Georgia, when J1 would be relocated to Fort Stewart, Georgia. That was 1992.

I realize now that I think about this entire time as a block of time (1992-1995)... the time when J1 and I lived together. So many things happened, but most of them were small things. Point of fact: I didn't understand most of what happened in this relationship until years and years and years after it ended. And I wonder, even as I try and consolidate it now if I my take on it will change at some point in the future? I know that I thought the reasons for it ending were different ten years ago than I think today, so who knows what I will think ten years from now? And isn't it odd that I can't think about the reality of the relationship without the ending of the relationship? I think that may be because I see now that it was always hanging by a thread or starving or one breath away from dying all along. I don't know. That doesn't mean we weren't happy. We were. Sometimes very much. But so are people who live paycheck to paycheck and don't know that the boss is discussing eliminating their position.

• We really liked doing many of the same things. We had fun together.
• J1 was a terrible communicator when he was upset about something. So, when he did let it out, it was like a volcano erupting. It was the current thing, plus the thing from last week, last month, and maybe even something from last year that you did that really pissed him off. All at once. With no opportunity to respond to any of them.
• J1 was a helpful person. He liked to help. He was good about helping in the kitchen cooking or wherever help was needed. 
• J1 was downright scary when he lost his temper. It didn't happen often, but people who lost control are frightening. He scared me sometimes. He never hurt me, but he scared me several times. I think he scared himself sometimes.
• In the move to Georgia, I really lost myself in terms of my "career." There is no publishing in Savannah. I didn't know what to do with myself. It didn't get better when we moved back to Michigan. He went back to school, but I was still feeling aimless. I got a job as a secretary, but it felt like a waste of my education. And I probably blamed J1 for my choice to leave NYC, which wasn't good for our relationship (or fair to boot, since it was my choice).

The end result was that he felt stressed at school, I felt stressed at work, and we both weren't very happy people. We were arguing a lot. I know I felt trapped. He sensed I was on the verge of running, and I think he actually wanted me to stay and work it out. And that is irony for you. Because most of our relationship was him running and me chasing after him. However, after we moved in together, it was like the sand kept shifting beneath our feet, and I never felt steady. Of course, the irony was that I pushed for this. I made this happen. Had I not called him in NYC on the floor of my kitchen he would've let it all go. OR he would've realized somewhere down the line that he messed up a good thing and done something to set it to right. But, what I now know was that there was always this whisper in the back of my mind (a knowing if you will) that I forced this into being. I forced something into being that wouldn't have been if not for my forcing it. He'd taken the out door years ago and I pulled him back in. And now that we were engaged (oh, did I leave that part out? Well, we got engaged in there, too.) But, now that we were engaged and on the threshold of forever, I didn't want to be with someone I had to yank into a relationship. And that feeling slowly ate away the ground beneath my feet until even I had to acknowledge I was standing on nothing.

And this might sound a bit crazy... more so if you've never lived anything like it, but I loved him at the end, and I didn't anymore. I loved him in the way a person always loves their first love. But I didn't love him in the way that I should've stopped loving him as soon as he told me that he didn't contact me after getting all of my letters because "he didn't want to hurt me anymore." It was like that statement finally caught up to me (even though I didn't yet know that was what caught up to me). My soul recognized that he didn't love me enough, even if he didn't know it yet. Not enough to get married.

Of course, at the time I didn't know any of that stuff. I just knew it wasn't working, and I didn't get it.

I never thought I could feel this way and I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong, but the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back