I am listening to an old song by Taylor Swift called, Dear John.
I used to cry to this song remembering how much I sobbed during the most painful break up in my adult life to a boyfriend named John. You know the kind of break up that takes you to your knees as you can literally feel your soul being sucked out of your body?
I can laugh thinking about how I am trying to explain that feeling because after 30 years, that aching feeling is a memory. Thank God, but my 18 year old daughter told me that she wants to know how it feels to have a broken heart. Oh, baby girl, you don't.
Of course, as a mom, you want to never watch your child go through the pain of loss, but then you would be robbing them of the experience of having your whole being skipping with joy in the drunken feeling of infatuation. Again, it's been over 20 years since I have felt that, too!
"Dear John, see it all now that you're gone".
The highs, the lows, the misery, fear, longing...
Looking back, could I have skipped those years from when I met John in 1991, to when we finally called it as friends..and then, Lord, we moved into together as room mates as thirty somethings with slim pickings to share housing costs in Silicon Valley in 1996. By then, I was over it, but funny enough, when my now husband came on the scene, John had his hackles up. He moved out soon after it became apparent that I had found the one I would marry.
John attended my wedding in 1999 and he even came to visit me with his wife in 2012 in Hawaii.
Somewhere along the way, John dropped off Facebook and we lost touch. I learned from his Facebook feed that we was much more conservative than I would have ever put up with as I moved on through life. That seems to remind me as I listen to old songs about how it was just never meant to be. I wish I had known all that when I was in the pit of despair thinking of how could I possibly change myself to somehow be better for him and then he would love me. Now I know that I did not love myself enough to let someone make me feel that way. The gift is passing on the wisdom to my daughter as she finds her way in the dating world.
And Taylor, thanks for the song to bring back the memories of how life teaches us what we need to know.
