Breakup Songs

36, Day 78 (Written Tuesday February 28) ~ Tonight while driving home with my family a song came on the radio that was an audio time machine. I hadn’t heard it in over a decade and when I heard it tonight it took me back to middle school in an instant. The song was Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Be There For You” (sing along if you know it). “You left me drowning in my tears, and you won’t save me anymore, now I’m praying to God you’ll give me one more chance girl. I’ll be there for you, these five words I swear to you, when you breathe, I wanna be the air for you, I’ll be there for you, I’d live and I’d die for you, steal the sun from the sky for you, words can’t say what love can do, I’ll be there for you.” Jon Bon Jovi, Shakespeare himself hath nought penned more noble verses. I cranked it up and sang it at the top of my lungs and then made a tragic mistake (worse even than singing 80’s Bon Jovi out loud in the presence of others), I told my family that I remember shedding many 12 year old tears to this song after my 7th grade version of the love of my life broke up with me. As you might imagine, with two teenage sons, the laughter, mockery and insults came in rapid succession. My oldest immediately revoked my man card.
I’ll admit, it sure is funny now, but at the time, my young little heart was broken into a million pieces from which I thought I’d never recover. This wasn’t the first or last time I would pop a tape in my boom box (if you are under 30 and reading this, please find a member of Generation X to explain those two previous things to you: tape and boom box), and sing and cry until it didn’t hurt so much. Sometimes it only took a night, others it took days. In 8th grade, a 6 month “going together” (my longest relationship at the time) went south and to soothe my aching heart I turned to Aerosmith’s “Tell Me What It Takes.” Man it seemed like those old geezer rockers from Boston were thinking about me when they wrote those words, “There goes my old girlfriend...as for all those late night promises, I guess they don’t mean a thing. So baby what’s the story, did you find another man?...now you’re back on the street like you didn’t miss a beat...Tell me what it takes to let you go, tell me how the pain’s supposed to go, tell me how it is that you can sleep in the night, without thinking you lost everything that was good in your life to the toss of the dice?” Well done Stephen Tyler, well done.
Believe it or not, the power of the break up song came into my life much earlier. Many years before, while in elementary school, 3rd grade I think, my girlfriend and I had just broken up and my family went to Pickwick so I couldn’t call her (there was a time when phones were only in our houses and you almost never called anyone long distance), and tell her I’d made a terrible mistake. The only thing that got me through that trip was Journey’s “Oh Sherry.” I can still remember trying to figure out how to call her on the pay phone and hold the receiver up to the boom box so she could hear how sincere I was through Steve Perry’s voice, “You should’ve been gone, knowing how I made you feel...oh sherry, our love holds on, holds on.” But it didn’t hold on, and although my 9 year old heart couldn’t begin to understand such things, it’s good that it didn’t, any of them. Those three girls are all happily married and have been for 10 to 15 years each. One of them is married to one of my best friends and who I consider to be one of my favorite people in the world. They all have beautiful children who look a lot like their mamma’s and their daddy’s (I know from experience because I saw their parents at their age).
As for me, my heart would get broken several more times, and far worse, before I found a girl who had a heart that had been broken many times too. Together we picked up the pieces of our broken hearts and found that they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle that made one beautiful new heart. And she and I took it and locked it away and treasure it. I can’t help but think of another song right now, Rascal Flatts “God Blessed The Broken Road (That Lead Me Straight To You).” And I’m thankful that I’ll never need another break up song to get me through the pain. Instead, I now write songs about how much her love means to me. What about you? What were your break up songs?