Nietzsche, Ben Lee and breakup music: a ramble

Traditionally I have been the one to end relationships. My pattern was that I’d freak six weeks in and bolt. In my defense this was a pattern formed as a confused Christian teenager, then I got knocked up at nineteen and after a brief dalliance at around 21 I didn’t have sex for around seven or eight years! (SO not my choice). The point being that it might not have been a pattern that continued as I matured and came into my sense of self.

I don’t have a whole lot of experience of someone breaking up with me. I think it happened once as a teenager and I cried all night and woke up the next morning looking forward to the school disco that night. It happened once again in my mid twenties and I was ragingly pissed off: he’d bolted because he hadn’t wanted to get married. I think he was confused as to my intentions.We’d been together three months and hadn’t had sex so not wanting to sound like a scary ‘hussy’ to this apparent uber-Christian I phrased my question of ‘WHEN THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO SHAG?’ as ‘What’s your position on sex before marriage’. He unfortunately focussed on the latter end of the sentence where as my focus was firmly on the ‘sex’ part of the equation. Oh well, live and learn.

I did have another relationship after that, and it was meaningful and difficult to end, but I did it.

This is, then, the first time I have loved like this, so also the first time I have felt this level of grief/ this sense of profound loss. It’s simply phenomenal. I had no idea I had this in me, the tears, the laughter, the letting go, the wanting to hold on, the exhaustion, the thought processes…

One thing that has struck me though is how different it is this time around. No anger at the decision, no sense of ‘I hate you you prick’, no desire for angry music, no desire to shut it all off, to hide and make it go away, to protect myself, to pretend I’m ok, to indulge in pride.

I thought music would hurt and I didn’t want any music I loved to be associated with sadness and loss so I steered clear of all music for 24 hours. Then I only listened to Fleetwood Mac for another 24. Is there a more positive breakup song than ‘Go your own way’? It’s not I hate you, it’s you made your choice, I wanted to give you everything, you wouldn’t take it, you made your choice, be free.

I think the last time I had someone break up with me I was listening to ‘I hate you so much right now’ by Kelis.

But I found that I could listen to music, that most of it was okay, that sometimes there was a song that caused a feeling like a shard of glass had slid quickly into my insides, but that that was okay…if I breathed through it, if I held myself and remembered that I think this decision was right, if I let myself feel it, and cried if I needed to, that it was okay to feel that sharp pain, that it was part of it.

I was startled at how alive I felt through and with all the pain. That I was distraught and sobbing, but also energetic and enthused. I downloaded Ben Lee’s music as I’d recently seen him and liked his take on life. I was walking through the city, listening to Ben Lee, bouncing along the street, headed to my counselor’s office, and right there alongside the grief and loss was a sense of opportunities, of a love of life, of people, of my city, a sense of joy.

I had ‘Gamble Everything for Love’ on high rotation ‘tell me are you getting hurt is it worth it, tell me are the people strange, do they change, tell me are you letting go, do you know’. I was amazed that in this hurt and sadness that I still believed it, still believed in gambling everything for love, believed that I had, that it had been worth it, that I felt alive.

I started pondering how much his music made me feel happy and open and loving, or how I liked it because it reflected those things I was feeling, and thinking about saying a Nietzschean ‘yes to life’ – to the pain and loss as well as the joy, and how much more alive I felt because of it.

I’ve just tried to not control it, to go with it, even as I know how exhausting it is when you think you’re ‘better’ and something triggers your loneliness or sense of loss again, I’ve thrown myself into life, to cutting myself breaks, to doing what I need to, to friends, and food, and time with my son, to time alone, to time to greive, and time to laugh, to run when I feel cooped up and to lay quietly when I feel I’m running too fast.

I guess I’m surprised by it all as I come from a very locked down family, where emotions are only ever registered and displayed as anger, not sadness, and that I know this was an issue I had for a long time.

In the light of that, the fact that I loved with everything I had, that it ended, that I am grieving it honestly because I still love, because I want to let go properly, because I want our end to reflect our beginning, because I want to be myself in this, to be open and honest…it just makes me really happy that I can. I think I’d always liked the concept of Nietzsches’ ‘yes to life’ but had known secretly that I was afraid of embracing the painful sides of life. It just really feels like a moment of having grown up in some way to be able to embrace it, and to realise that embracing it doesn’t make it worse, or unbearable, but better, lighter, more joyful grieving?
Aaanyway…I loved him, I love him still, I think I always will – and the relationship ending doesn’t mean those things dissolve or get coloured by the ending or I need to think of him differently. I loved him as I wanted to and I’m grieving him as I want to, we’ll move on to new and different things and I will take with me all the good things and leave behind the times we hurt one another, as the line(s) in Ben Lee’s ‘Gamble Everything for Love’ go:

Gamble everything for love, gamble everything
Put it in a place you keep what you need
You can gamble everything for love if you’re free
You gotta gamble everything for love