Danny doesn’t need a full playlist, just one single song to give voice to despair.
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Up until last year when it came to love, dating, sex, and relationships I was getting nowhere. Reasons for this ranged from not coming across very many women that I wanted to talk to and get to know to being soul crushingly shy to simply striking out when I did attempt initiating something. All of these reasons added up to quite a bit of despair.
A lot of people have a song that embodies certain emotions, feelings, or events. For the longest time my feelings and experiences around dating had no such embodiment. That is until I heard “Given” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl.
This wasn’t something that happened upon listening to it for the first time. Instead this was something that built up over time as I listened to it repeatedly. After a while the association just slowly fell into place.
I want to stop thinking of love
Dreaming of love
Defining love
I want to feel the earth below me
Ravish me
I wanted to stop thinking of love after a long time of not experiencing it. Stop thinking about it, stop fantasizing about it, stop conjuring images of it. Get my head out of the clouds and back down to earth so to speak. There was no use in going on about something I’d never experience right?
Given
The waterfall, the illuminating gas
The bachelors, suitors at my call
I used to dream of love as a machine
Myself as the motor, erotic energy
But abandoning love is not that easy. Closing your heart off from the possibility of connecting with others sounds good on paper but it’s not that easy. I still wanted to meet someone that I could connect with. Having someone to connect with is something that most people want and not just in a sexual way. I also yearned for emotional connection. Someone that I could share my life with and someone that would share their life with me. A partner.
I’m ready to experience this love
To look beyond this glass
Leave concept for realityI want to feel the water immerse me
Consuming me
I want to leave behind this lauded virginity
To experience love
To be taken by love
I want to feel the sunlight upon me
Overpower me
When it comes to something that can inspire joyful feelings and sad feelings it would make sense for conflict to arise. On one hand I wanted to get rid of anything even resembling love and connection after years of never feeling or experiencing them but on the other I still wanted to live it and experience it because they seemed to be such great things when you do actually take part in them.
Given
The waterfall, the illuminating gas
The cinematic blossoming, halo of the bride.
I used to diagram love as a machine
Myself as the motor, erotic energy
Even with all the thoughts of getting rid of love at the end of the day I still wanted it. No matter how much it hurt to not know love I couldn’t bring myself to truly abandon all possibilities of it.
These are the feelings that were swirling around in my head when I met the woman who is now my current girlfriend. You may be thinking that as soon as saw her the explosions went off in my head and all that but it really didn’t. We were both scared to talk to each other and the mutual friend that put us together (she arranged a group outing) had to put a bit of effort into us.
The feelings of despair had really gotten to me and I was scared to explore what could be with her. Would I end up liking her just to have her not return the feeling? Would she like me and then I wouldn’t like her in return?
We’ve been dating now for just a bit over a year and it’s been great. Working my way through those thoughts and daring to put my heart out there has led me to conclude that I was right to still want to feel love despite what my past experiences told me.
I think lots of people have voices in their heads telling them different messages. Some may even have voices that conflict with each other. In the end though you can’t let those voice distract you from living the very life they talk about.
photo courtesy of band’s website
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