Life Lessons: on Love. Start again, again. Music by Neon Trees, Words by Ross Hawse.
words by | Ross Hawse of Musication
I was thinking the other day of how many things there are in life that can’t be taught. You know, the lessons you can only learn? The lessons you learn in life only by living through them.
Like Love for example: The love you feel for your child when you first look in their eyes, the love you feel for your pet when you take them to the vet for that last visit, or the love you feel for your father as he takes his last breath. Living with or through any of these will teach you so much about yourself.
Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and felt something that went so deep that you felt it through your entire body?
Like a shiver? but inside your body?
You don’t know exactly what it is or why it feels so good but you can’t get enough of it.
That’s the kind of love that can leave a mark.
When it comes to this kind of love, there is always someone who suffers a little more than the other when the relationship ends. I’ve walked this road. I’ve felt the shiver. I’ve both experienced the high, and the low. When this relationship was at its darkest and I was desperately hanging on, I would rack my brain trying to remember that one. moment. that it went off the rails.
I realized there was no ‘one event‘ or ‘one thing’, at least for me; it was just a drifting apart over a period of time. We started to spend less time together; I felt a distance growing between us. The smiles were less frequent, little things become arguments. In the end my days were spent walking on eggshells and the nights, staring at the ceiling.
Together but alone.
Nothing that’s done at this point makes a difference and in my experience, I felt like all or most of the effort was coming from me. It’s not one thing or one moment but I wished it was so I could have fixed it.
Fixed it and not me.
Fast forward: a few years down the road.
If there had been one moment for me to go back and fix that one thing, I know now, it would have only prolonged the inevitable and I would never have had the opportunity to start again. As cliche as this statement sounds; That painful end led to a wonderful new beginning.
Sometimes, sometimes I can still feel the desperation that I had felt at that time, but it’s less and less each day. It took a while. That one left a scar.
I’ve decided, the deeper the shiver, the bigger the scar.
The heart maybe doesn’t always break-even, but it does heal. The scars however, they will always be there. As you struggle through this beautiful life there will be ugly moments. Those ugly moments allow you to appreciate the beautiful ones. And those scars, those are passing grades from one of life’s grand lessons. Battle born: the scars will remind you of what you’ve been through and what you won’t go through again.
If you can get to the top of that hill, the view is worth it.
words by | Ross Hawse of Musication
m! Media & LBH Collective 