When You Hear A Song And Are Suddenly Reminded Of Him

Sometimes you hear a song and become immobile. You freeze. Freeze in your tracks with a racing heart, no, stopped heart, and can barely stand to blink. Each strum of the guitar in the opening pierces your heart like a tiny knife “ding, ding, ding” and resurfaces a feeling so buried, so intentionally hidden away, so many years ago. You are paralyzed. And suddenly.

“She said, ‘Hello mister, please to meet ya,'”
“I wanna hold her, I wanna kiss her.”

You no longer hate him. He is happiness. He is magic. The person he was, and the person you were when you were with him is all you crave, because you know how to build a castle from the ground up.

You want him like a tall, numbing glass of wine after a long day at work, because he numbed the outside world for you.

You miss that life; that small, crafted bubble of a special place you both dwelled in. You miss urgency and passion and tearful embraces. You miss wanting to die without him. Now, you just want to die.

Maybe you’ll see him. You dance between two plans of attack, a mocking expression and dart out the door, or a stupid, exhausted, “Hey, stranger.” Both options sound cheap, diluted and unlike who you are and who he…was. You’re in love with an idea, no, a feeling, or an idea of a feeling, that taps on the back door of your brain every moment you feel dissatisfied by life. You think, “Maybe I could have that again. Maybe with someone else. Maybe with him. Just for one night.”

Snap back. Play something else. Step out of that mental room—memory lane bears no welcome for a checked-out hotel guest. Take a deep breath and play your new life. It sounds a lot like trying to be something you’re not and making the best of a messed up dinner order. But you have learned over these past three years with him and three years without, that you are just a prisoner begging for scraps, and pretending to be gracious for what’s given to you. You have to eat it.