I should already be sleeping but I've got a lot of thoughts swirling so probably best I just get them out and then hopefully sleep will find me quickly. The man and Gray's album dropped and I received a personal invite from Gray to check it out on Friday evening. I listened with my twin on the way up to PA yesterday and then again that night with my headphones because I couldn't stop thinking about some of the songs. Like I told Gray earlier tonight, overall I was just super impressed and the guitar was beautiful throughout the entire album. I'm still genuinely surprised my favorite song was Resolute which is entirely instrumental so definitely not what I typically sway towards considering how much I love to sing. Not all of the singing and lyrics were particularly note worthy, but I sincerely enjoyed the album and keep going back to Electricity and Gone Away. I've listened to Gone Away the most and Gray shared that it is a vulnerable song so I'm sure that's part of why I'm so drawn to it, but I know I'm also incapable of not trying to gleam any kind of meaning from it.
As the years have gone by and the process to move on with my life has seemed to be SO much harder for me than it ever was for the man it's been really hard not to internalize the belief that I was never all that important to him. As Burdman put it bluntly not that long ago, "There were never any months he was trying to be in a relationship with you, it was never going to be you". Obviously from my point of view, I truly thought he was trying to be with me, at least on two occasions. During our very first stint crossing lines we never should have crossed, I couldn't believe he blew his life up because he wanted to be with me. No one had caught him, I had never asked him to do anything like that, but who knows what would have happened if we had carried on in our bubble of delusion. I've always wondered how things would have played out if I had been in a head space where I could have been all-in with him instead of being so unsure about everything in my life. The other time was when he came back to me after spending the summer apart and told me that song from Black Mirror "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" had caused him to have an epiphany about me and us and helped him see what he wanted. I thought he finally understood how I felt about him and how impossible it was for me to truly let go and I trusted him when he told me he wanted our someday.
When I think back on that time now, I know it was incredibly stupid of me to think that someone in the middle of chaos like that who honestly had no idea what they wanted or needed in their life was capable of starting something real with me. But I do wish that when he started to believe he couldn't give me the life he assumed I wanted, he had talked through those worries with me instead of making a decision for me and just vanishing from my life only to reach back out 9 months later. Nine months we could have spent actually having a chance to finally learn each other. I honestly don't think I've ever wanted to know someone the way I wanted to know this man, I wanted to know everything and everyone from his childhood to his now, I just wanted to understand him and to prove to him that all of it was worth sharing and could be loved. It really was so easy to love him and I remember being so excited to no longer hide how I felt and to just be able to celebrate him, but things never got there.
The last few years though I think I've just been annoyed that everything even happened causing me so much pain for nothing on top of creating a situation where I could never explore things with Gray even though I know how fucking rare it is to meet people you click with. It all just feels stupid. I'm really glad that Gray wanted to share their album with me, even though I definitely didn't need him to reach out for my sleuthing skills to find it eventually. Definitely surprised not to see a post about the album from the wife though, like I would be promoting the shit out of this album if I was still allowed to be friends with these guys let alone if I was one of their SOs. Like the man and I are legit strangers these days and I'm still super proud of him for doing something like this because at one point I knew him enough to know this has been a dream for a really long time.
I don't even know how many times I've listened to the song at this point, but just now I tried to capture the lyrics best I could:
Gone away
Forever is a long long time
Can't tell what it takes to say goodbye
Gone away
Forever's such a long long time
Is it up to me to draw the line?
Could more time have made me understand you?
Or have I learned enough by now?
Sometimes I think I know
But then I turn around
and I'm lost for now
and you're gone away
Forever is a long long time
Can't tell what it takes to say goodbye
Gone away
Forever's such a long long time
Is it up to me to draw the line?
*kickass solo*
I can't try to bring us back together
And I know you're close
but I don't know how
You play the game to lose
and now you can't be found
So long for now
Cuz I've gone away
Forever is a long long time
Can't tell what it takes to say goodbye
Gone Away
Forever's such a long long time
Is it up to me to draw the line
Gone Away
Forever is a long long time
Gone Away
Forever's such a long long time
-----------------------------
There have been a few times over the years where I asked the man why he could never give me an actual goodbye. I never got an answer but I think for the part of my heart that still hurts over this story in my life I'm gonna choose to believe that maybe our experience together was partial inspiration and maybe I never got a goodbye because if he had to face me to do it, he wouldn't have been able to redraw the line of strangers. And now that we have to be dead to each other forever it's hard not to wonder if he ever gave things enough time to actually understand me to be able to see what we were and could have become.
Logical me knows I have no idea what the song is actually about, that maybe it's about losing a loved one, and not romantic at all and that I'm just a blip in both of these men's life stories but hopelessly romantic me is gonna believe that maybe I'm a worthwhile muse.
I know I'm still not ready to really even think about putting myself back out there and to start dating and while both Burdman and Density have asked me if I'm going to move back to PA, I hadn't even considered that as an option, but I guess it's a potential one. Especially with my firm being acquired and the new company having a stronger PA presence I'm sure if I had a reason to, I easily could do that. I just don't see a good enough reason to do that, I miss people in PA for sure, but I know without a doubt it was so good for my mental health to move away from there and the man. Putting some physical distance between myself and all of that really helped me to stop holding out for him to come around again. Clearly I'm still struggling with processing the imbalance of the feelings involved in that situation-ship but I know I stopped being afraid of my life blowing up in my face without warning because of him reaching out. I definitely already miss companionship, it was really nice having a break from being single, I'd really missed having a person. I really hope once I decide I'm ready there's worthwhile men in the area that could be good life partners.
