It’s not mine. I’m pretty newly married (this past December), and trying for a kid (a scary and aggravatingly difficult undertaking–As Sarah Silverman said, in her irreverent way: “Everyone knows the best time to get pregnant is when you’re a black teenager.” It’s better delivered than written, I suppose.)
I digress. I’ve always digressed while musing, which is why I called this “Musings” and not “Straightforward Thoughts.” I haven’t mused in this format in a long time, and I didn’t know when I’d get back to it. If you’d asked me the most likely time, I wouldn’t think it would be in a Motel 6 in Eugene, Oregon. But I woke up ready to get to it, and that’s a great feeling, just chomping at the bit to write. I haven’t had it in a while because I’ve been writing toward deadline on my new book (it’s being submitted to editors in September) and then it’s not about inspiration but, as they say, about perspiration.
That was also a digression.
So the mix tape in question isn’t mine, as I said. It’s a former client’s. While my husband and I were on the road for eight hours yesterday, I was going through my CD case and found one that wasn’t labelled. Ready for novelty, I put it in and listened to ten notes and said, “Still don’t know what it is.” By the next song, I’d realized. It was from Daniel (not his real name), a former client for whom I have a lot of liking and a lot of compassion. He’s smart, peculiar, and most heartbreaking, given to misanthropic rants but so eager to end his isolation. It’s his desire to connect, I think, that led to him giving me a copy of the breakup mix CD he’d put together for a girlfriend who’d broken up with him. I probably should have asked that therapist-y question when he handed it to me: “What does it mean to you to give this to me?” But I just said “thanks” and then never mentioned it again. If he was bothered by that, he never said it in therapy.
I did listen to the mix CD on the ride home that day after work. I thought he had decent taste in music. I shook my head at the quirkiness of the “gift.” And that was that. It went in the CD case, not to be listened to again until several years later, on the road, near Chico, California.
It was different, listening to it now that I don’t see him regularly, and with my husband beside me. Listening to a mix CD, especially one prepared on such a low occasion as being dumped, is a glimpse into someone’s mind and tortured heart. And it was funny, sitting there listening, how much I missed seeing Daniel, missed that mind of his. It was so expressive of him: The aching vulnerability of songs like “Everybody Hurts” (not the REM version–this one was done by a woman and had an amazing sad cello that I liked far better than the original), a song I don’t know the name of that is all about how he’ll come back when he’s called, ending on Schoolhouse Rock’s “Three is the Magic Number” (the breaker-upper has a daughter), the painful hope involved in giving her the CD but the manipulation as well (trying to induce her to miss him), not to mention the unusual act of giving a copy to his therapist (which actually induced me to miss him years later–probably not the intent, but then, what was the intent? Was I supposed to gain insight into the particularities of his heartbreak to better help him? Did he just want to know I thought of him outside of the office? Did he just think the mix came out well and that I’d enjoy it?)
One song on the CD, Iron & Wine’s “Such Great Heights”, reminded me of an old love of mine. I’d first heard the song through him, and he broke up with me years ago and never looked back, while I mourned for a year afterwards. If anyone had been giving a breakup CD in that situation, it would have been me. After all, giving the CD is about supplication. It’s saying, “I still love you, and you’ve caused me immense pain, but I’m here if you need me.” In effect, I’ll come back when you call. And in my case, I would have done that but he never called. Lucky for me, I went on to find someone who loves me enough to support me in all endeavors, including writing this musing when we really should be on the road by now, headed for British Columbia. I hope that the same will be true for Daniel.
While that would be the normal place to stop musing (I’ve found my happy ending, I have a husband and hope to have a baby on the way), that’s too simple. Because the truth is, some part of me would love if my old love, the one who never looked back, read this. I’d like him to know the good things in my life, though obviously, if he had cared what happened to me, he would have contacted me in all this time. I wonder why I still care about his indifference. It’s not a desire to be with him or even to be friends but I would have liked to, say, have him congratulate me on the publication of my first book, some small acknowledgment that we had impacted each other’s lives in a positive way, some clear validation that I had mattered. Without that, he remains something of a blight, a mix CD that I will never get to play again with fondness. So maybe what I hope is that Daniel heard back from his ex, that she played his CD and appreciated it (and him), told him what a great person he is and that she wishes it could have been different. As it says in the really lovely Evan Dando cover of the Abba song: “Knowing me, knowing you, there was nothing we could do/knowing me, knowing you, it’s the best we could do.” There’s a reason therapists are so big on closure.
Now on to Vancouver.