Time To Play B-Side

I miss vinyl.  I miss buying records.  I miss when records and cassette tapes were the only thing you could buy.  I remember 8-track.

Time. 

I remember when I was about sixteen.  I was walking through South Coast Plaza Mall and this guy hands me a flier for Blue Oyster Cult.  The awful truth is this... I didn't go.  I really like the band too.  This morning I was listening to "I'm Burning for You"

Quiet.  My mind just went into quiet motion.  Slipping along with shadows and light.

The song kept playing over and over in the background in my head.  Shampoo in my hair, thinking it's May 1st already.  My birthday is almost here.  I'll be 42.  My birthday.  I pictured how over the last several years John would take me to Anthropology to buy something. 

And I started sobbing.

It's almost his birthday too.  The same day as my youngest sons.  I'm blow drying my hair wondering if there will always be this shadow in my life.  This quiet motion under the light.


Other thoughts out right assaulted me this morning.  All attached to songs.  Foo Fighters 'I'll Stick Around' ... Audioslave 'Shadow on the Sun' ... Atlas Genius 'Tojans'

I Don't Owe You Anything.  I wondered to myself why I'm not just out there living it up.  It's an impulsive thought, born of anger and frustration and weariness, completely independent of any sort of responsibility like being a mother.  Do I place that level of responsibility on myself though?  Do I not allow myself to get out there using the excuse of mourning John, still being in love with him (And I DON'T OWE HIM ANYTHING after everything he's done to me), being a Mom to my sons, my job?  Do any of them really hold me back or do I use them as excuses?  Or are they simply boundaries right now.  Am I doing things the way I'm meant to?  I have to have this time for myself to learn from it, to heal if I can.

Trojan.  I feel like part of what John was in my life is like a Trojan Horse, or a virus.  He morphs and multiplies and touches everything.  Sometimes it is a good thing.  A lot of times there is some kind of hurt involved.

Shadow on the Sun.  Scary.  Scaryscaryscary how this one just covers it.

I do not want to this to define my whole life.  I do not want this to color my future.  I do not want this Shadow in my life forever.  I do NOT want it.

But what if I am?  It has happened to others.  Their whole lives consumed by one defining person.

I can't tolerate that.  I won't. 

I think I still have time.