No slamming doors, look both ways, save it for a rainy day, don’t sit so close to the television.  The one I missed: don’t fall in love with love.  It’s as dangerous as mercury.

Falling in love with love is an illusion.  It’s your grown up imaginary friend.  I know I’m prone to it because I’ve got a record.  I literally have journal entries from years ago, describing the exact feelings I face now.  I read them shaking my head.  Oh my God, I haven’t changed.  This passage, are you looking?  This one, right here.  Then I press at it hard, the tip of my finger turning white.  Oh yeah, big time.  You could slap it onto your condition right now, down to the minute.  It’s all recycled and familiar, and familiar is dangerous because it’s often pathologic. 

Men who love me get frustrated, worrying if they make me happy.  They make me afraid to be sad near them because they question themselves, question if they satiate me, if they even make me happy in the face of my sadness.  They want to give up.  I’m too difficult.

I worry I’m the only one feeling things.  I’m anxious about one-sided.  Nothing in this world scares me more than rejection.

The hardest thing for me to accept is transience.  It is harder than dieting, the ability to accept that the things we work so hard on, believe in, and fight for can go at any time.  Giving up the idea of guarantees and permanence is harder than giving up French fries with mayonnaise.  But, the sooner I’m able to let it go, the easier life’s disappointments will be to bear. 

It’s the chorus in my life, the repeated versus, the same theme right down to the words.  The only hope I have is, eventually, songs end, and the last line usually changes the meaning of everything that has come before it.  And, there’s always the rest of the album.