Since there have been so many other emotional moments I have had and her singing has been involved, why would this be any different? Went to Loser’s last night and went through my usual drill of filming a few seconds of the first couple of performances, then checking to make sure if I need to adjust the zoom and my angles are good. Got that out of the way and this performance happened. After all these months, and I assumed she probably had it in her catalog but I have never heard her perform it, so I didn’t think about it. Still dealing with what happened in Mid-February and I am not ready to discuss those details yet, but with this song bringing up things in my past I have to at least get this off my chest. Briefly thought about it while filming but I was so focused on the performance it didn’t hit me. Didn’t think about until I heard the first few seconds so I had the title in mind after I upload it to Google Drive this morning and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Will probably bring up some things that some of you will think were (and are) wrong, but the one thing I have never done is pull any punches, so I will just put it out there.
My marriage had been terrible for years, but being a child whose parents divorced and they used me as the conduit to vent their anger and frustrations out towards each other, I just dealt with it because I didn’t want my kid to deal with the same thing. Also was at a very low point professionally because of the Obama economy. It was around the time this song was released that I started running into a certain woman. We struck up a friendship and over a brief period of time, it developed into something more. She had been divorced for a while and as we got to know each other I learned that she was an executive for a very big company that has their headquarters here. That obviously meant she was at a certain level both financially and professionally that I was nowhere close to. For a brief while it didn’t matter because we just enjoyed each other’s company, but over time she decided she wanted to be in a relationship. She ended it not only because of my marital status but also in regards to my position in life. I reminded her too much of her ex-husband and she wanted to be with someone who was more compatible in that regard. It really hurt (still does since I am writing this) because it was the first time I experienced any happy moments in years, even if we were just talking. We remained friends and she moved on with her life.
Did what people in my position do and had the secret email account the wife didn’t know about. I knew she had tracked my phone for years but I didn’t care because I had nothing to hide. Remember one time in particular she sends me a frantic text wanting to know where I was. Ended up having to take pictures of the receipts where I had just purchased gas and beer since they had time stamps to prove I wasn’t where the phone thought I was. One day I accidentally left access to that email account on the phone and she saw some messages. It was nothing directly incriminating (luckily I had deleted all of those) but basically the “jig was up”. We had the “we need to go to counseling” conversation but since we weren’t in a financial position to do that (thanks to her regarding her spending habits and her ability to burn bridges for me regarding my employment but those are other stories) so I was able to put it off.
After Trump got elected, within weeks I started getting offers back in my old profession which put me on the path to getting back on my old financial and professional footing, but I purposely took a job out of state just to get out of that house and I have to give credit to the ex-girlfriend for giving me the courage to do so.
Before I left I did meet someone else (I know, should have learned my lesson) and because this new person was at almost the same level professionally as the ex-girlfriend she was able to do things like see me while I lived out of state and we went on a couple of trips together. After a few months, I got an offer for the same position but closer to Nashville. Took the opportunity to move in with the new girlfriend and never looked back. About a year after I moved back here I get a text message out of the blue from the first ex-girlfriend. She wrote that she needed me to call her back. Couldn’t do it because of work so I spent the whole day thinking about the whole situation. Finally called her back and while I obviously had my hopes up about what her reaching out to me meant, the reality was it was not like that at all. It was simply to advise me about something and she went into how she had gotten married to a “more compatible” guy she had started dating so I had that to deal with.
It hurt but it also made me realize that I was not being fair to the new girlfriend because I will admit I took advantage of the opportunity to not have to completely start over all at once and while I was happy, over time the issues were in some ways the new girlfriend was like the ex-girlfriend, but in others she was like the ex-wife. Also had the issue of her being “the rebound girl” so I was never as “into the relationship” as I should have been.
Eventually I did move out on my own which a lot of you know about and it was that complete independence that has been allowing me to “do what I do” regarding a schedule for all these months. For the record the first ex-girlfriend is the one that I am 90 percent sure is the one that walked by me outside of this office last summer and a certain artist’s original song “Please Don’t Say Hello” immediately popped in my head because of me having to say hello regarding the return of the phone call and it stopped me from the risk of going up and if my assumption was correct in some way having a conversation I really didn’t want to have along with having to deal with the possibility of somehow getting hurt all over again.
Amazing how one song can bring up so many things and I definitely did not expect it to hit me like this. Thanks to all of you for letting me get this out there, just by writing it down has helped. In regards to the song this is Lynagh performing Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”.