‘Gravity’ Merges with My Real Life

The crushing stringed crescendo in Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity” is one of the most heartbreaking sounds I’ve ever heard. Every single time, my knees weaken, my heart skips, and my life stops at every fork in the road, where I could’ve gone on or given up entirely.

“Gravity” makes me glad I opted for the former when many, too many times, I yearned for the latter.

When the violins wind their downward trail through the misery and the beauty, fragile and strong, breaking and falling like rain, I can not only see, but feel, every single soul out there that I’ve ever loved, and all the reasons why in all their alluring elusive glory.

It’s addiction personified, the musical equivalent of ripping off the Band-Aid and letting it bleed.

“I never wanted anything so much
than to drown in your love,
and not feel your rain.”

Bareilles must’ve been in a lot of pain to write that song. Personal, private, soul-shattering pain. For every “Brave” sell-out, I always go back to that one (and “City”) for emotional and spiritual sustenance.

Every time I read in the news about some asshole getting away with murder, another Narcissist receiving another award, one more decent person driven mad by a soulless system, I turn on “Gravity.”

Backstabbed by faithless friends. Abandoned by everyone. All talk, no action. Zero talent, yet the world genuflects.

“Gravity.”

That song applies to almost everyone who meant anything special to me:

• a pastor struggling with demons, self-loathing, and lack of faith in himself
• an ex-best friend who dropped me when the waters got too rough
• *the boy I was going to marry, who never loved me at all, and is now dead

Lately…*one special someone I thought I made myself forget. One horrible night, and I’m onto the next guy, and the next and the next. Mark, who? What’s that they say about other fish in the sea?

For 40 years, I fooled myself.

Until, for whatever reason, he came back, haunting my dreams, lingering in between the drudgery, torturing me with a love that could never be mine.

“You loved me ’cause I’m fragile,
but I thought that I was strong.
But you touch me for a little while,
and all my fragile strength is gone.”

They say it’s easier if the man cheated on you with another woman. But, I say, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. There’s nothing I can do about my body. Although, lord knows I offered.

Then, there’s the terror of thinking he only used me as a cover, that I will never be woman enough for any man to love, that I’m flawed, damaged somehow…and every man after him will see it, and say, “Nah, hard pass.”

I’m 56 now. I don’t give two shits what any man thinks of me, or whether Mark ever thought of me, with regret.

Until “Gravity” comes on…