I was raised to believe I should
never give up on anything. It was a long hard lesson to understand the
difference between letting go and giving up, but I was raised to never quit,
never surrender, and to always pick
myself up and keep going, no matter how hard I was knocked down.
But, you can’t possibly stand up
tall all of the time, so when I wanted to quit, when I couldn’t pick myself
back up, when I felt knocked out, not knocked down…I called Dad and he always
picked up, because he knew how he raised me was easier said than done. He knew
that.
Dad was the best person to go to
for advice. He listened, he understood, he was genuine. His advice could be
brutal, but it always was accompanied by a quip, a quote, or an allusion to
some song, movie, play, poem, a piece of history. I didn’t always come out of
our conversations knowing what I was going to do, but I always learned
something. Sometimes about myself,
sometimes about Julius Caesar, nonetheless, I needed those conversations, like
I needed to stop crying over this guy who had done me wrong, which is exactly
what my dad was trying to tell me when he said, “You know Ray Charles, right?”
I was in my early twenties, sitting
in my apartment complex, alone. Crying over a boy…a man, technically, a boy,
fundamentally. It wasn’t my first heartbreak, nor was it the first time I had
cried over a boy. There had been plenty before him and I was sure there were
more to come. There had to be because looking back, I had been crying over boys
my whole life. There was Robin, a master tether ball player who moved away in
the sixth grade. There was Clay, a green-eyed Mormon who had never taken notice
of my four year crush on him, there were all five of The Backstreet Boys when I
read the article in Teen Bop about the band breaking up. I had cried many a
tear over boys, but this time, the tears were accompanied by the feeling of
defeat. That’s what made this time different. The hopeless romantic in me was
taking her last breaths of air, the young girl in me had begun to curse
fairy-tales, and the young woman in me had given up.
“Listen to the song and cheer up.
It’ll be OK and in a few months, I’m sure none of this will matter.” I knew I
needed to just get over it, but it wasn’t as simple as just getting over
someone, it wasn’t just the ending of a friendship or relationship. It was the
concept of relationships and love in general. This had been the last break in a
long string of disappointments, chained together with the rusty links of lies
and let downs. I sniffled, wiped my nose, said goodnight to my dad and hung up
the phone.
I didn’t know where I was going to
go from here, but I sure knew a lot more about the biography of Ray Charles.
That was the night I gave up. My
dad’s advice was to move on, forget; listen to Ray Charles. I did. I did listen
to the song, multiple times, while teardrops fell down my face and I tried to
figure out what my father’s message was to me, what Ray Charles’ message was to
me. But, I had already chosen to stop trying to understand. I wasn’t heartbroken,
I was defeated. The young woman in me had put her foot down, the little girl in
me was pouting, and the hopeless romantic in me, well, she was missing in
action. I was sure true love was a made up concept. A way to deny reality. A
label. A crutch I believed I would either have to settle and call it love or
never really find love at all.
I hit repeat on the YouTube video
of Ray Charles and pulled my flowered quilt to my chin. I rolled my eyes at how
this frilly linen had cost me ninety dollars and then rolled my eyes again at
how stupid I was to still be listening to this song. I was tired of crying, it
was time to stop and figure life out. Figure love out. My neck slowly tipped
backwards and my head lightly hit my headboard and my eyes opened to the bumpy,
white drywall above me. I took a deep breath and hit play again.
This was partly my fault. I knew
that. These tears and pain were half, maybe even more than half my fault. Which
was why I was so mad. I should have known better. Hadn’t I learned my lesson
yet? I tried to trace back over my decisions, figure my way through the maze of
how I ended up exactly where I sat now. My brain filed through ex-boyfriends,
ex-lovers, ex-friends. There had to be someone, something to blame. A pin-point
to where I could point and say “That. That’s where I messed up.” But, there
wasn’t or there were too many and in the end, no matter how many times I hit
replay, no matter how many times I closed and reopened my eyes, no matter how
many times I told myself, “that’s enough,” I was still
twenty-two, crying, alone in my bedroom. I had given up on trying to
find an answer and simultaneously had given up on love. I slammed my laptop
shut.
“Fuck you Ray Charles.”
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