so I've started out for God knows where, I guess I'll know when I get there

Still in heavy reflective mode...but it's easier to breathe.



someday they'll find your small town world on a big town avenue
gonna make you like the way they talk when they're talking to you
gonna make you break out of the shell cause they tell you to
gonna make you like the way they lie better than the truth

Well, that's always the story, isn't it, when the big city slicker meets the naïve farm girl? It's not mine, of course--I was never much for big cities or naïvete, though I've experienced both--but it's one way I could view this.



they'll tell you everything you wanted someone else to say
they're gonna break your heart, yeah

I think, at this point, it's less about broken hearts. Heart bruising, sure, I think that's a safe bet. But it's not just mine that got bruised, is the thing.



from what I've seen
you're just one more hand me down
'cause no one's tried to give you what you need

And while, yes, this resonates--I run this blog, how could this not resonate??--it's not exactly true, either. It took me a long time to find it and a longer time to accept it, but I think, now, I finally have people in my life who do try to give me what I need, or at least support the search for it. And while it's still far from graceful, I'm starting to accept that, without too much aw-shucks countering.

so lay all your troubles down
I am with you now

There is a specific someone I'm thinking of for this, yes, but--for reasons I'm probably too close to my own issues to see, properly, that other with the bruised heart? Has made me that same offer. Not that he's said he's still 'with' me in that couples' sense, but that I can talk to him. Obviously, I wouldn't want to do that now, with anything, but...in time. In time, maybe.



somebody ought to take you in
try to make you love again
try to make you like the way they feel
when they're under your skin

You know, it's funny. I wasn't looking for anything when I found my first love; in fact, the moment we laid eyes on each other, the very first thought through my head was "There's trouble." And it has been merry trouble indeed, lo these many years later--but I wasn't looking, was the point.

I wasn't looking for anyone I found, in RL or SL; I wasn't looking for anyone who found me. Which makes it sound more as if I'm stumbling through life drunkenly, reeling off the walls, and...well, there may be some truth to that, sadly. But in the main, I am not one of those women who 'sets sights' on anyone, and worked to pull them in. It's not in me. I'm more the one blinking like the deer in headlights when they ask me to be with them.

I'm always just a touch baffled.



never once did think they'd lie when they're holding you
you wonder why they haven't called
when they said they'd call you

Well, be fair, does anyone think they're being lied to, at least at first? Because if anyone can answer that affirmatively, then I'm officially less paranoid than someone else out there. And, mysterious reader who identifies with that, that should worry you.

you start to wonder if you're ever gonna make it by
you'll start to think you were born blind

Frequently. I am forever either reading into things that aren't there, or not reading the signs when they should be clear. It's a flaw. I have a great many of them.



I'm here for the hard times
the straight to your heart times
whenever it ain't easy
you can stand up against me
and maybe rely on me
and cry on me, yeah

Upon reflection, I fibbed a bit, above. At one point, when I was far younger, I was consumed by the search for a love. I had poured too many Regency-style romances into my malleable brain. Let's just draw the curtain there and say that profoundly didn't work out? With some staggeringly bad consequences.

After it didn't work, though, I abandoned the search for love entirely. I was better on my own, was the thinking--other people just hurt too much. Independence was what I wanted.

I was wrong there, too.



some day they'll open up your world
shake it down on a drawing board
do their best to change you
they still can't erase you

The world changes everyone. There is no one who lives completely isolated from other people, other perceptions, other information. Everyone is, at one point, altered like wine through water, and emerges changed. Now, some of us are rocks, and it's all surface coating, and some of us are sponges, soaking in habits, behaviors, mannerisms, turns of phrasing. Those of us in the latter camp are dyed by the world in variegated shades, until we can no longer discern our original pattern. Parts of us grow, and parts of us die, and the colors of our experiences leak and shift the tone of the waters we're in. I'm more fine with that than angry at it, though--it's just how I'm made.



you're just one more hand me down
and all those nights don't give you what you need
so lay all your troubles down...on me

Now, here's the scary thing: relying on other people. Let no one tell you that isn't the single most nerve-knotting thing for those of us hurt by the world, by inter-relationships, by interwoven history. Because anyone can turn on us; we know it, we've seen it, we live it.

So to turn and say--yes, this one, this one I trust, this one knows me and isn't running, this one I can rely on--yes, that's terrifying. But also, potentially, necessary for understanding. And more change...

This wasn't the Great Epic Love, no. But I think on the other side of it, I can admit it was more than just having fun without consequences. There was...something...there.

Oh, and while we're here--



Right. Everyone prepared? Great. Let's go.

And I really liked Elizabethtown.

(Song is Matchbox Twenty's Hand Me Down.)