365 Day Journal Challenge

Day 17 - Diary of Jane

Day 17: Diary of Jane

I have to admit I don’t remember ever hearing this song and am not sure what the context is for the rest of the song.  However, I see this as a man still in love with a woman who has either cheated on him or is giving him a good dose of emotional turmoil.  He knows it is over but he has to find a way to show himself that the time he spent with her, and himself personally, did make some mark on her; that he did matter to her after all. 

I am reminded of the song from RENT where they say how many minutes are in a year and then list the ways we measure a year.  To me, and I’m sure many others, when I think of a particular even and can’t remember what year it happened, I can usually remember who I was dating and then figure out the year from there.  We often think of these periods of time as “the era of (insert name of ex)” because we learn so much about ourselves through the eyes of others and when we actually date someone, we have more moments in a short period of time to have these interactions.  These are the “eras” we often mess up our lives, or narrowly escape messing up our lives, or perhaps they are the era’s when we feel guilty for messing up someone else’s lives or nearly doing so.  These are also the eras where, instead of messing up, perhaps we or the other person “saved” their partner by bringing up to a better place psychologically or physically (better living environment or healing influence).  We also tend to see the in between time as a period of waiting til the next connection. 

When we end a relationship or it is ended for us, soul searching is bound to happen.  We want to prune out a lesson from the union so the time and experience is not wasted.  We want to know what the other person learned from the union and what mark we had on their lives as they have, no doubt, made a mark on ours (for good or not so good). 

Oh, some want to destroy evidence that a person was ever in our lives but getting rid of tangible evidence doesn’t remove the smudge on the document of your life.  You can’t erase what has happened, though in time, you can stop referring to it with others and its likely only you and the significant ex will remember.  However, you will remember.  You can curse the person for leaving you or you can thank them for releasing you so you can find the person you were meant to be with.  You can try to refrain from looking at the person or experience in good or bad terms but rather, “this happened with me and these are the lessons I learned: To be more …, that it’s okay that I’m …, that I can’t fix someone else without their help, that next time a suitor does ….I’m gonna RUN, I’m gonna be more careful next time, whatever you learn will be the mark they will leave on you.  It doesn’t have to be a smudge, a blight on an otherwise clean page.  It doesn’t have to be written in marble for all to see, a shrine to the loss of a saint.  It doesn’t have to be forever entered into the annals of your history.  But, I firmly believe it all happened for a reason and to ignore the experience and the lessons that come from that experience is to practically yell to the heavens, “I missed that, will you say it again please” and I’m sure the experience will be recreated for you again so you don’t miss it a second time.  Do we really want to keep on going through all that over and over. 

This song reminds me why writing, music and art is so important to us humans.  It is a way we mark our passage through our lives and allow others to also share in what makes us who we are.  Writing songs like these allows others to read them or hear them and say, “That’s it, that’s what he/she made me feel when they left me” or whatever the words and significance it brings. Some are better at putting feelings to words than others.  But reading them can bring healing as much or more than writing them.  IT also gives others a feeling that this writer lived to write about it so  maybe heartache isn’t fatal afterall. 

Keep writing guys, for ourselves and for others.  You can help other’s find their places in their own diaries as well as their exes and current loves.  Reading and writing are two disciplines that are far underrated as FREE PSYCHOTHERAPY.  And that is okay.  We have to get ourselves whole however and whatever it takes to do that.  In a couple, it  is multiplication not addition that rules.  ½ + ½ = 1  NO (two halves cannot equal a whole)
Rather 1 X 1 = a whole.  People who feel they are only half a person, not whole, looking for a mate to complete them so together they can be whole-this is a recipe for disaster.  Two people who are whole in and of themselves, who look to another to multiply the love they already have for themselves and others and to increase their already whole personality – when they come together, they don’t complete each other but they form two columns that hold up a marriage (or relationship) and family together, each holding their own weight.  It is also difficult when one is whole and is trying to turn a ½ into a whole.  Only our own selves can do that.  I see so often in my line of work when one parent is relatively stable and the other is obsessive, or abusive, and usually the one that was whole to start with is lucky she/he is a half by the end of the relationship (kids included).  The half can tear down the whole so much faster than the other way around. 



Okay, I did not intend to go there with this entry but I can’t help it.  I will stop now with the social worky stuff.  Anyway, keep on creating-no experience is a waste of time-learn something from it and it won’t be.  Don’t learn from it and you might have to repeat it.  YUK.

SWPoet 




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