The song I never stop singing (sighing)

Everyone's gotten some fragmented song stuck in their head. The tune (the clip of the tune) may start at the chorus and goes on until you get to those words that were never quite clear, you try to wrap your head around those missing lyrics, grasping at anything vaguely familiar to fill in the missing gaps so you can finally have a whole song and move on with your life. Sometimes they drift from memory. But as soon as you hear a couple notes wafting in on some foreign breeze, then the obsession begins all over again.

Gabriela, the song I still sing, the one that I never sussed out, some parts so clear that I can go there and remember what love was like, other parts I've rewritten or forgotten or exaggerated in my head. I am writing what I can before I forget, before I warp it any more. There was a time that it was pure inside of me, that time should have never ended.

I'm just going to put all of this out there. It needs to be out of me, out into the world, just not looping in my head. I don't want my every other post to be about her and this and what could have been and what should be; it needs an end. I want to just get on now, but you know how it is... the more you want to get that song out of your head the more entrenched it becomes in the quicksands of the mind, you have to stop resisting if you want it to surface. You have to listen to it.

There's a room in my memory that Gaby lived in when she was still of my heart. The room remains intact, just the way she left it. Her scent hangs there in the stale air, her bed's still dimpled like she used to sleep there, her breath is crystalized on the mirror I look through.

How did we meet. First there was curiosity and long glances. Then there were the nights of talking and smiles. There were letters and there were poems. There was music and laughter. There was sharing and there was honesty. There was telepathy and there were signs and there were dreams. There was desire. There were promises. There was secrecy. There were many sacrifices. There were worlds moving. There was knowing. There was love.

Before she came to Columbus, on the night of my birthday, she asked me my wish. I said all the obligatory stuff about it not comeing true if I tell her... but what I was really more scared of was that it would. I made a big point of not telling her... because it really was my wish and because I felt this monumental gravity would be stirred up if I told her, like many things rested on this wish. She insisted, I gave. I tried to give it some feeble poetic phrasing, something like, "A beach where the Sun shines so brightly that even the night has memory of it's penetrating brilliance." What I didn't say, but secretly wished in my heart, was that she would be there with me, in my arms. It did come true. I never told her that second part. I hope she knows she made my wish come true just by being there.

The first time I laid eyes on her in my own city, I was already done for. I held her and felt for her breath against me and when I did I knew she was real. When I kissed her, it was right. When I smelled her, it was right. Her eyes, her smile, every freckle. My mind and body were humming, I needed every inch of her. When first I made love to her, I made love to her. She fit. She felt like home.

I had my teeny apartment all set up for us together, I really wanted to make it our apartment. She appreciated that I think. I took her out to meet all my friends. She was a little shy with them, but they liked her; Ben and Jalena especially. I wish that I had included my friends with us more, but I was being protective. It was mistake. We did have a lot of good times with just the two of us. I miss being outdoors with her. We went to my farm a bunch of times and walked around and layed around and made love in the green grass. We hiked in yellow springs and ate shrooms on this big boulder while we plotted out our deaths. There was a weekend camping in the hocking hills, we had this great little campsite. After hours of trotting all over that beautiful country, we had hours sitting together by the campfire and then we sacked out in the tent I put up. Man, what a good time... so many of my favorite things together. I want that again.

So, at first things were really great... then they got really not great. It was apparent that Gaby wasnt going to find employment; the US isnt interested in foreigners unless they're tourists or terrorists. Her money ran out.... then mine ran out, then I lost my job and my wallet with my last paycheck in it and in the same week... This weighed heavily on our relationship and especially on me. I stopped going to school and fell into a major depression. I checked out.

I hadn't really made the extent of my depression clear to her... I thought there would be time for that, I didn't anticipate its onset so soon, so she was unprepared to deal with it and not in any place to help me help myself. When my depression reaches it's depth (usually after such great heights) all I want to do is give-up. I told her I was never going to be well, that I would always be a wreck. I told her to go back to Mexico. She went. She wanted to go. By the time I surfaced to lucidity she was already gone.

I want to go back to that Tim who said and did those things, I want to slap him, I want to hurt him, I want to do whatever it would have taken to wake me up to reality of what I was doing. I was abandoning her; this incredible woman who had been so full of hope and love and light, who had sacrificed everything to be closer to me. And for what? Because I didn't feel good enough, I didn't feel in control. I would bleed out my heart, I would drag my naked body through Hell, I would quit smoking A MILLION TIMES if I could only change what I was then. I was wrong and I am so sorry for it.

Returning to what my life had been before was a bleak substitute. Before meeting her I had already made up my mind to leave Ohio, possibly even the country, before the start of winter. Actually, Gaby was my final motivation for staying and after she was gone so was my attachment to Columbus. I sold everything of value, gave my mini-van back to my Dad, and moved down here to D.F. Things were on-again, off-again (as was my depression) for a long time, then we made the real split just before New Years because her mom thought we were really together.

I've seen a few girls since this year, one even fell in love with me, but I haven't felt an iota of what I feel for Gaby with any of them. Nothing. Not even hardly a blip on the radar. Even sex has lost most enjoyment for me, it's become something merely better than being numb. Is this what happens, is this what turns the boys into bitter old men with no room in their hearts for anyone because it's already occupied with the ghosts of their broken dreams. Is this how it goes? Alot of the time I do feel like an empty husk, only moving for the sake of motion. Everything I'm doing, the meds, the smoking, the exercising, the dating, the blog; I do it because if I don't I'll die from the numb. If I stop I drown. The only time I feel like a real person is when I do these things and the only other time is when I'm with her.

I don't want to fight my own nature anymore, I do love her. And I should; she's proven herself to be deserving of it over and over again. She's been good for me. What I don't want is to keep feeling this lacking, this emptyness. It's the sense of lack and emptyness that tranfixes my mind, it's these holes that make the fragments loop in on themselves, the single line on the broken record. So I'm going to finish this song. It was terrible and it was beautiful and though we wrote it together, I'll end it alone. I promise to always keep it with me, but in my top five list instead of in my only thoughts.

The missing part, the ending I guess, is that my life is better for all of it. Yes my thoughts are often turned toward regret, but the fact of the matter is that love and the loss of love have inspired me to do things that I would never have done otherwise. I'm in Mexico City! Jeez, maybe if we had just done things differently, if I had come here first instead of her to me, things could have worked out for the both of us.

I'm sorry that Gaby got nothing for all she's suffered through with me. She left her boyfriend, who she was/is still in love with, and quit her job to come to a piece of shit city and live with a guy who fell apart over the course of three months, only to come back to Mexico, have all of her stuff stolen, and move back in with her loony parents. What did she gain? And even after all of that, she's been so dependable and supportive while I put my own shitting life back together. She never told me to pack it in and go home like I did, but then she's much stronger than I am. She deserved better. I could have given it to her. I wish I still could.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I'll close with one more song:

Greg Brown - Lord I Have Made You a Place in my Heart

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

among the rags and the bones and the dirt.

There's piles of lies, the love gone from her eyes,

and old moving boxes full of hurt.

Pull up a chair by the trouble and care.

I got whiskey, you're welcome to some.

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,

but I don't reckon you're gonna come.

I've tried to fix up the place, I know it's a disgrace,

you get used to it after a while -

with the flood and the drought and old pals hanging out

with their IOU's and their smiles.

bare naked women keep coming in

and they dance like you wouldn't believe.

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,

so take a good look - and then leave.

Oh Lord, why does the Fall get colder each year?

Lord, why can't I learn to love?

Lord, if you made me, it's easy to see

that you all make mistakes up above.

But if I open the door, you will know that I'm poor

and my secrets are all that I own.

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

and I hope that you leave it alone.