The Soundtrack of My Life, Up A Lazy River

On my Battle of the Bands post, I promised to do some 'splaining about what happened at the end of freshman year that impacted sophomore year. We are finally to that point.

I was good friends (I was sure "besties") with this girl we'll call Erika, since that's her name and the chances of her reading this blog are nil. Anyway, Erika and I hung out all the time end of freshman year. She was one of those people who was liked by everyone. A whole lot of fun to be around.

I mean check out this face. This looks like a super nice person, right?

At the end of the year, you decide on who you want to room with the following year. We decided to be roomies. In the meantime, I turned down a whole bunch of other opportunities for roommates. In fact, I hooked two of the people up who asked me to room with them. Thus, when Erika backed out on rooming together at the last minute, because it might strain our friendship, it could've put me in a real pickle. Turns out, one of my "party" friends still needed a roommate, and we decided to give it a go.

Moving back into sophomore year, things with the actual roommate were working out very well AND things with Erika were also going very well. She and I still were "besties." Check out this sweet card she made for me in September:

click to enlarge

I also became much closer with the girl with whom I actually roomed. Our party friendship turned into a real one.

This person is actually a nice person:

me on left, roomie on right

Erika and I decided to roadtrip to New York for the fall break in October (she lived there). And then I was going to visit a high school friend of mine who was going to school at Westminster Choir College (it's close to Princeton).

Anyway, during the course of this trip, I made the mistake of sharing with Erika all of the "crazy" I felt about my parents divorcing. That's what best friends are for, right? Turns out we weren't best friends. In fact, after that trip, and my over-sharing of my feelings about my parents' divorce, we weren't friends at all. She couldn't handle my brand of crazy as evidenced by this note she wrote me right after we returned:

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That hurt for a long time, and that little bit of distance turned into an ocean. But, never doubt that there is a Bigger Plan at work, and she wasn't in mine.  Besides, if you can't handle someone's fears about their parents' marriage going up in flames, you aren't going to handle the tougher stuff that comes later. She was a shallow pond instead of a pool. It's always best to find that out sooner than later. Can you imagine getting that letter and still having to room with that person for the rest of the year? I was so thankful that Erika pulled the plug on the roomies thing in the spring. Otherwise, sophomore year would have been an endless nightmare.

This song, though, sums up how I felt about that relationship tanking when I needed it most.





With a sampled heartbeat and a stolen soul
I sold my songs to have my fortune told
And it said
You should know that love will never die
But see how it kills you in the blink of an eye

I know love is a hot white light
It knocks you down and then leaves you dry
Oh how can it be sweet mama tell me why
Why all love's disciples have to wither and die

Please sister, help me come on do what you should
Please give me something I’m not doing so good
I’m gone, done wrong is there nothing you can say
Please sister help me I’m not feeling ok

Give me belief that my time will come
And a toll free helpline if I find someone
But she said
You gave away what you never really had
And now your purse is empty I can see why you’re sad

Please sister, help me come on do what you should
Please give me something I’m not doing so good
I’m gone, done wrong is there nothing you can say
Please sister help me
Can you make me feel ok

So if it’s true, that love will never die
Then why do the lovers work so hard
To stay alive

Please sister, help me
Please give me something oh
Please sister, you know I do what I can
Oh sweet mama, please descent me a man
Cause I’m gone, gone
Is there nothing you can get
Please sister help me I just need some love
To live
Just a little love to live 

Have you ever mistaken a shallow pond for a deep pool? Been disappointed when someone you thought was a friend walked away?


If you're enjoying these posts, feel free to share your own Soundtrack. This isn't a hop. No requirements at all, but a suggestion to do it one song at a time. (If you participated in the hop several years ago, you can still do this. Just post them one song at a time, with the freedom to add more songs if you'd like.) I'll link to all participants at the bottom of each of these posts:

StMcC Presents BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Cherdo on the Flipside 

Holli's Hoots and Hollers

The Soundtrack of My Life, This Is What Marriage Looks Like (and BoTB results)

Before we get to the actual post for today, I've got some BoTB results to post for you. The song was Orange Colored Sky and the contenders were Natalie Gauci and Michael Buble. This was one of the most interesting battles here on this ole blog in a long time. For the longest time it was back and forth with the vote, but then Natalie Gauci pulled ahead and Michael Buble simply couldn't catch her. The final tally without my vote:

Natalie Gauci: 15

Michael Buble: 9

I'm with the majority on this one. I thought Natalie Gauci blew it out of the park. However, that isn't to say that I didn't/don't enjoy the Michael Buble version. In other words, no matter how this turned out, I'd have been fine with it. Two very fine versions of a wonderful song.

If you didn't read the last Soundtrack post, I suggest you back up one. This is really an extension of that one.

Okay, so you're caught up, right? It's sophomore year and my parents are divorcing. Here's the "rest of the story" that you really need to know for everything that comes down the line to make sense. I said in a previous post that I had no good role models for how "good marriage works."

My parents: My father was wonderful with my brother and I. Always willing to talk and listen. Not so much with my mom. I don't know when they quit trying, but I know it grieved my mother greatly. There were times she'd stand in the bathroom and cry while we were both getting ready in the morning. At the time, I was sure it was something I'd done (but I had no idea what and wasn't brave enough to ask). Turns out, it was just the gulf between her and my dad. One that she never could cross. He was distant and cold, and I suspect the harder she tried to bridge it, the faster he ran for higher ground. That would be Model #1 on Marriage.

My grandparents: My grandpa was horribly abusive to my grandma. In point of fact, abuse ran all the way down my grandma's family tree. Her mother, my great grandmother, had seven sisters. Every last one of them married an abusive man. Some were alcoholics. Others not. None of them nice. On visits to their house, I'd listen to my grandma give my mom the update on "the sisters," and it was one case of abuse after another. For my grandma, this was the "normal" way to live. She was surrounded by abuse and accepted it from my grandpa daily. It was very hard to watch. That would be Model #2 on Marriage.

My dad's mom (nanny) and that whole side of the family really: My dad's mother divorced five times. As did her mother (my great grandmother), which was unheard of in those days. My aunt was divorced for the third time (I think) most of my life. But she had boyfriends who came and went. So, it was the opposite end of the spectrum over there. There was a lot of kicking to the curb happening and a strict No Tolerance Policy of... well anything. I think the lesson was "leave them before they can leave you"... or something like that. That would be Model #3 on Marriage.

It's all really messed up. I know it.

Then there's my own takeaway on what love looks like: If it doesn't hurt, it isn't love. I guess I pulled all of those scenarios together, and that's what I decided on. How do I know this? Well, if it wasn't hurting me, I didn't trust it. Of course, when it hurt too much, I had to leave it. But, the only thing I had any faith in was the storm.

Like I said, messed up.

Now, given that, you'd think I'd hate this song, but I LOVE it. And the video is freakin' awesome.






Have you noticed how the relationships of those closest to you influenced your own choices? Were you lucky enough to have good role models or have you, too, been trying to overcome faulty belief systems?


If you're enjoying these posts, feel free to share your own Soundtrack. This isn't a hop. No requirements at all, but a suggestion to do it one song at a time. (If you participated in the hop several years ago, you can still do this. Just post them one song at a time, with the freedom to add more songs if you'd like.) I'll link to all participants at the bottom of each of these posts:

StMcC Presents BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Cherdo on the Flipside 

Holli's Hoots and Hollers

The Soundtrack of My Life, Going Through The Big "D" (and I don't mean Dallas)

If you participated in Battle of the Bands (June 1 post... and still time to vote!) than you know that we've slipped into my sophomore year at college.

My parents decided to divorce my sophomore year. When I originally wrote this post, the way I remembered it was that my dad sent me a letter letting me know that he and mom were divorcing. Turns out I keep a lot of shizzle, and when I was making scrapbooks I taped all of that shizzle in there... including the letter from dad. After reading the letter (again), I realized the letter was a follow-up to a phone conversation in which they dropped the bomb. But, all of these years later all I remembered was the letter. The brain is a weird place. If you don't believe me on that, you need to read some of my older blog posts. They confirm it.

Here's the proof that I did get a phone call and then a letter:

Click to enlarge

Here's the bizarre thing about my parents divorcing: I was expecting it. I'd known it was going to happen since junior high school and I watched the movie Heaven Can Wait. If you've seen that movie, do you remember the scene when the Warren Beatty character takes the Julie Christie character out to dinner? At the end of the evening he drops her off at her hotel. As she's walking up the stairs he calls from the parking lot, "My wife and I are getting a divorce."

She replies, "But you're not even separated."

He says, "Sure we are. It's a big house."

Granted, in that movie said wife was desperately trying to kill the Warren Beatty character for his money. It wasn't like that in my house. No one was plotting murder, and the house wasn't all that big. BUT, my parents lived very separate lives. In fact, there was a distinct lack of conversation. My parents could go for weeks without saying anything other than, "Pass the salt."

So, they didn't divorce because they argued all the time. They didn't. They simply didn't connect any more on any level, and even I knew it.

So, what was shocking about this turn of events? They did it before I expected. I really thought they'd wait until my brother graduated high school (and me college). So, I thought I had a few more years to adjust myself to the idea. I also thought it wasn't going to be "that big a deal" when it finally happened.

Boy, was I wrong.

If I thought I was in a spin freshman year, I learned what spin really was my sophomore year. I even wrote a research paper on divorce and why it happens. The whole world felt upended and my faith in the "lastingness" of relationships was at all-time low. Honestly, I'm not sure that it ever really recovered, because I still am amazed when someone says they're happily married after a whole lotta years. How do they do that???? What I learned in my research was that they do stuff together, take an interest in the other person's interests, and genuinely like one another. (You can understand something intellectually and still not really grasp it, if you know what I mean.)

What I'm trying to say is that knowing on a theoretical level what keeps people together and what drives them apart didn't change a whole lot for me. I was still messed up.

Just when you think that you know it all
You'll never fall and that it's all good
And you're gonna win again, it's a sin, that's gonna mess you up

Just when you think that you can't be touched
You're on your way up you think you're too much
That's gonna mess you up, it's your ego, your mojo, out of control

That's gonna mess you up, life has a way
To put you in your place if it needs to
That's gonna mess you up, leave yourself behind

Look around you'll find, it ain't all about you
In the end it's who you loved and who loved you
If it ain't the heart and soul stuff, that's gonna mess you up

Just when you thought that the girl was yours
She stuck it to you with a note on the door
Sayin' all take and no give, boy that ain't no way to live

She left you high and dry in the middle of the night
'Cause you didn't treat her right, that's gonna mess you up
You neglected, she rejected, should've expected

That's gonna mess you up, life has a way
To put you in your place if it needs to
That's gonna mess you up, leave yourself behind

Look around you'll find, it ain't all about you
In the end it's who you loved and who loved you
If it ain't the heart and soul stuff, that's gonna mess you up

That's gonna mess you up, life has a way
To put you in your place if it needs to
That's gonna mess you up, leave yourself behind

Look around you'll find, it ain't all about you
In the end it's who you loved and who loved you
If it ain't the heart and soul stuff, that's gonna mess you up

Have you ever been through a divorce? Your parents? Your grandparents? How did you cope?

IT WAS ON FIRE WHEN I LAY DOWN ON IT

If you read Robert Fulghum's second book, IT WAS ON FIRE WHEN I LAY DOWN ON IT, he was so blown over by a tabloid newspaper article about a man rescued from a burning bed that he named his book after it. The disconcerting part was in the answer the man gave to "'How did this happen?'" He replied, "''I don't know. It was on fire when I lay down on it.'" Robert Fulghum spent some time doing some mental head scratching over that one, so much so that he named his own book after it. I read said book in 1990 and still find myself thinking about it twenty years later. It was on fire when I lay down it??? Seriously?

My paternal grandmother, nanny, as all her grandchildren called her was a free spirit in her youth. And she said and did pretty much whatever she felt like later in life, too. I imagine she got a lot of that confidence from her mother. Now, her mother (my great grandmother) was divorced five times. She didn't let anyone tell her what she could and couldn't do. I didn't really know her but I think she was probably formidable. I know her family disowned her. You just didn't do that back then. She did.

One of the last conversations that nanny and I had before nanny's mind started to go was on her front porch when she confided that my grandfather (who died long before I was born) was the only man she ever truly loved. I didn't say anything because all of my questions would have seemed insensitive and I didn't doubt her sincerity. She'd had a lot of time to think about it. After all, he'd been dead longer than I'd been alive so there was no chance of them reuniting. Nothing she said to me would change the outcome for her. So we sat and rocked and I think we both felt melancholy for damaged relationships.

Unfortunately, my nanny's divorce from my grandfather fell under the sordid heading and details were never all that forthcoming (it wasn't a story told at Christmas around the dinner table) so the details, to this day, are somewhat unclear for me. But there was cheating (possibly on both sides/probably on both sides) that led to marriage on his side to another woman that was true love. I think that was the real sticking point for nanny and maybe the cause for her cheating. She may have employed the cheating to make you jealous device and it backfired. Who knows? Not me, because no one talks about it. More to the point, maybe nanny didn't know. She saw her husband falling in love with someone else and she just started doing crazy things. Her choices don't make sense. Had there been a camera crew and a reporter standing by asking questions, her answer would have made just about as much sense as this... It was on fire when I lay down on it. She knows she burned her house down and she paid the price. She lived out the rest of her life loving a man who loved someone else and then loving a man who was gone. It was on fire when I lay down on it. Seriously.