Country Music and Old Memories

"Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers..." Garth Brooks

For some reason, I woke up with a need to hear Garth Brooks. I am not a big country fan as a rule, but I go through phases with it. For a few weeks, I'll tune my radio to country as a break from the mind-numbingly bad selection of crap on our local pop station. Today, though, I just wanted to hear Garth Brooks. I grabbed the cd on my way out the door this morning and popped it in the player as I headed down my driveway.

I always forget the one song on that disk that brings back old memories, "The Dance." I know that is the ultimate sappy cliche, but there you have it. When the first chords rolled out of the speakers, I felt myself tighten up against the flood of memories I was sure was headed my way. I have, in previous chapters of my life, sat in the floor and cried my eyes out, sure my heart was going to combust and kill me with the magnitude of pain. I always associated it with two particular people in my past.

Today, though, the pain didn't come. Instead of a great wave, it was more like a ripple in a swimming pool. I had to laugh at myself. Somehow, without realizing it was happening, I got over the two "great tragic loves of my life." I have to put that in quotation marks because I realize now that it's just not true.

I did love them. I have no doubts about that. One of them was a constant presence in college for me. I centered my world around him, and we were really good friends. I always felt more than just friendship for him, was constantly confused, and generally made life hell for my best friend/roommate and other friends. Looking back at that time now, there are things I wish I'd done differently, but there's not even the tiniest fragment of that horrible pain I used to feel. From time to time, I still hear from him. We're still friends, although we've become the kind of friends one becomes after college is over and great distances separate. That song was always one of those songs that brought the memories of the good times we'd had to the fore. I can look back on that time for what it was and see it with objectivity.

The other one was a grad school romance that caught me up like a summer thunderstorm. I met him through a mutual friend at an intramural sports club. To quote a romance novel cliche, our eyes met across the room, and I was hooked. I never believed that anyone like him could ever be interested in me, and he had to work quite hard to convince me otherwise. The time I had with him was brief and intense, and ended far too soon when I had to move. He taught me so much about love and myself, lessons for which I'll always be grateful. At a later time, he also jumped up and down on my heart, and I learned from that, too.

After him, I slammed an iron case around my heart, consigned all men to the devil as inconstant bastards, and decided to ignore them to the best of my ability. My move to Japan and the cultural and linguistic barriers involved in that made it an easy task. Only once after him was I even tempted to care, but that's a story for another night.

I expected him to flash into my mind and bring back the horrible end to hurt me again, but there was no pain. I could have stopped the car and danced in the street. Maybe this means that I am finally ready to try to trust again. That's no mean feat for me. It was a strangely welcome discovery. I don't know how far I'm willing to open that iron armor around my heart, but the fact that I'm willing to think about cracking it open at all was a minor miracle. I'm still considering what it all means, but I can't help but enjoy the happiness and peace of knowing that I can keep the silver lining without shivering from the darkness of the cloud it came from.