My Secret

I meant to link this song to last night's post.
I laid in bed for a while and thought about it, replayed it in my mind.
To me, it is almost biblical in its power to heal.
I remember back in the early 1990s when I was hurting over a failed business venture with friends, and I ate a lot to drown my sorrows. I didn't drink but I swallowed miserableness and potato chips in large, equal measures. And I remember a friend of ours, Richard, who could be caustic but was always good to me. He said to me one day, "what has happened to you? You used to be the hottest person I knew and now look at you."
Look at me, overweight in spades, crumbs on my shirt, grease in my hair, sadness and terror etched on my round face.
His words cut me to the quick.
I banished him from my life.
Other people had hurt me worse, but for some reason I focussed my hate on him. It festered in me. It hurt my broken heart like peroxide bubbled in an open wound. Because I trusted him. It's always about trust. Every broken heart is borne of broken trust.
And then one day I sat in the rocking chair in the kitchen, rocking slowly, staring out the window, listening to the radio quiet and low.
And this song came on.
This perfect song.
And I cried like a baby, cried like the tears would never end, cried for Richard, cried for lost friends and ruined opportunities and abandoned fortunes.
And I forgave him.
I remember back five years ago when I discovered my ex was cheating on me and I hit him with a Dr. Seuss book and I bit a cop's thumb and I spent a night in jail and I lost my children, and I remember this song.
I remember driving back somewhere in the dark night, and it came on the radio, and I cried for lost love and lost children and a loss of life as I knew it.
And I forgave him.
This is the song.