Getting out of an abusive situation is like coming alive again. For years I'd been barely surviving in an emotional warzone, trying my best to heal between fearful explosions after which I could hardly get out of bed the next day, emotionally speaking. If the interludes lasted days, I'd slowly heal and begin to drag myself around and notice the flowers until the next onslaught flattened me again. Wound after wound, in the same places in my heart, barely scabbed over before the next devastation came.
The immediate sensation I had after I left him was a sudden relief. A few days later I wrote a poem that alluded to the hush after nuclear fallout -- a beautiful, freeing silence. And then I realized -- I'm writing poetry again. If it's true that "I think, therefore I am" it was almost as though I had been a pale ghost of myself all this time, and now I was suddenly coming back into being, starting to think and write and express myself again. I imagine I'm going to write really angsty, uncomfortably self-aware poetry like a teenager for awhile before I grow up again into something more mature.
Part of that coming back into existence is the enjoyment of things. I've been rediscovering music, movies, books, poetry...in my marriage I'd still been consuming these things but not really aware of them, not falling into passionate infatuations with certain works of art as I used to. I thought I had just grown up and you don't swoon over gorgeous tunes or profound lines when you grow up. But now I realize that I am still that person inside. That I will listen to a song over and over again and let it deliciously break my heart every time. This post is about a song I've had on repeat for awhile.
A Facebook friend recently posted a request for the names of modern day laments, adding a caveat: "But not breakup songs." I, and his other friends, found ourselves at a loss for any secular songs that were true laments but not about a breakup. Perhaps it's that we in the Western world live such relatively comfortable lives, that the most devastating thing that happens to many people is a breakup. Or it could be that the Western consciousness is so consumed with romantic relationships that it can only conceive of laments using the language of lost love.
I didn't hear the song "Somebody that I used to know" much at the height of its popularity when people were hearing it ad nauseam, and apparently getting very sick of it, as my musician friends inform me. So when I discovered it recently, while in the throes of my own breakup, it was new and fresh and so real, so true. It's definitely a catchy tune, but I think the main reason for its viral popularity is that it captures so brilliantly the raw human emotion -- the mutual resentment, bitterness, loss -- in the breakup of that most intimate of relationships, eros.
I feel like my ex at heart could sing the main lines of the song. He seemed so bewildered at our final separation and the extremes to which I went to get him out of my life, my bank accounts, social media. etc. On my part it was a growing realization that he would eventually destroy me, and as time went by I begged and pleaded and brought up divorce in increasingly loud tones over the years, but for him it was sudden because he'd never taken any of those things seriously, had counted on my theology and my good-girl Christianity to keep me bound to him forever.
So I can imagine him thinking most of Gotye's bitter lines:
"But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"
And then I get to say Kimbra's exquisitely bitter lines back to him:
"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say"
The song is so dead on in the dynamics between the estranged lovers. He describes their breakup in neutral tones -- a no-fault breakup:
"we found that we could not make sense"
" it was over"
But she clearly has a different story to tell -- her accusations imply a verbally abusive, crazy-making relationship. Him "screwing her over," then blaming her, playing with her mind until she can't "live that way" any more. After all, what drives a woman to suddenly cut things off, send her friends to get her things, and change her number? He's in some massive denial that she did this for no reason. She obviously had a desperate need to get him completely out her life once and for all.
In the music video, they do a good job at the subtleties of these emotional intricacies. As her voice gradually crescendoes until, as another blogger put it, she's practically "snarling" at him, she moves towards him seemingly to engage. He closes his eyes at her accusations as if in pain, but refuses to turn to look at her until she is moving away and is gone from him forever. I know that dance. It's my own story.
The dysfunctional relationship, the two completely divergent perspectives about what happened, the sudden break and then the painful, gradual fading of that person from your heart and mind...I understand this all too well. Even when you escape from an abusive marriage, it still means losing someone that was once your everything, and for both the abuser and the victim, there's a deep tragedy that the person you once called the love of your life is now "somebody that I used to know."
Just for fun, I'll include here the Pentatonix remake that I really enjoy, since I love Pentatonix. Love the beatboxing guy (who's a believer by the way!) and the tenor who makes the intro sound so haunting.
and also the ingenious splicing together of LOTS of remakes, since the song was heavily covered by artists both quirky and talented, cleverly entitled: "Somebodies: A Youtube Orchestra."
The immediate sensation I had after I left him was a sudden relief. A few days later I wrote a poem that alluded to the hush after nuclear fallout -- a beautiful, freeing silence. And then I realized -- I'm writing poetry again. If it's true that "I think, therefore I am" it was almost as though I had been a pale ghost of myself all this time, and now I was suddenly coming back into being, starting to think and write and express myself again. I imagine I'm going to write really angsty, uncomfortably self-aware poetry like a teenager for awhile before I grow up again into something more mature.
Part of that coming back into existence is the enjoyment of things. I've been rediscovering music, movies, books, poetry...in my marriage I'd still been consuming these things but not really aware of them, not falling into passionate infatuations with certain works of art as I used to. I thought I had just grown up and you don't swoon over gorgeous tunes or profound lines when you grow up. But now I realize that I am still that person inside. That I will listen to a song over and over again and let it deliciously break my heart every time. This post is about a song I've had on repeat for awhile.
A Facebook friend recently posted a request for the names of modern day laments, adding a caveat: "But not breakup songs." I, and his other friends, found ourselves at a loss for any secular songs that were true laments but not about a breakup. Perhaps it's that we in the Western world live such relatively comfortable lives, that the most devastating thing that happens to many people is a breakup. Or it could be that the Western consciousness is so consumed with romantic relationships that it can only conceive of laments using the language of lost love.
I didn't hear the song "Somebody that I used to know" much at the height of its popularity when people were hearing it ad nauseam, and apparently getting very sick of it, as my musician friends inform me. So when I discovered it recently, while in the throes of my own breakup, it was new and fresh and so real, so true. It's definitely a catchy tune, but I think the main reason for its viral popularity is that it captures so brilliantly the raw human emotion -- the mutual resentment, bitterness, loss -- in the breakup of that most intimate of relationships, eros.
I feel like my ex at heart could sing the main lines of the song. He seemed so bewildered at our final separation and the extremes to which I went to get him out of my life, my bank accounts, social media. etc. On my part it was a growing realization that he would eventually destroy me, and as time went by I begged and pleaded and brought up divorce in increasingly loud tones over the years, but for him it was sudden because he'd never taken any of those things seriously, had counted on my theology and my good-girl Christianity to keep me bound to him forever.
So I can imagine him thinking most of Gotye's bitter lines:
"But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"
And then I get to say Kimbra's exquisitely bitter lines back to him:
"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say"
The song is so dead on in the dynamics between the estranged lovers. He describes their breakup in neutral tones -- a no-fault breakup:
"we found that we could not make sense"
" it was over"
But she clearly has a different story to tell -- her accusations imply a verbally abusive, crazy-making relationship. Him "screwing her over," then blaming her, playing with her mind until she can't "live that way" any more. After all, what drives a woman to suddenly cut things off, send her friends to get her things, and change her number? He's in some massive denial that she did this for no reason. She obviously had a desperate need to get him completely out her life once and for all.
In the music video, they do a good job at the subtleties of these emotional intricacies. As her voice gradually crescendoes until, as another blogger put it, she's practically "snarling" at him, she moves towards him seemingly to engage. He closes his eyes at her accusations as if in pain, but refuses to turn to look at her until she is moving away and is gone from him forever. I know that dance. It's my own story.
The dysfunctional relationship, the two completely divergent perspectives about what happened, the sudden break and then the painful, gradual fading of that person from your heart and mind...I understand this all too well. Even when you escape from an abusive marriage, it still means losing someone that was once your everything, and for both the abuser and the victim, there's a deep tragedy that the person you once called the love of your life is now "somebody that I used to know."
Just for fun, I'll include here the Pentatonix remake that I really enjoy, since I love Pentatonix. Love the beatboxing guy (who's a believer by the way!) and the tenor who makes the intro sound so haunting.
and also the ingenious splicing together of LOTS of remakes, since the song was heavily covered by artists both quirky and talented, cleverly entitled: "Somebodies: A Youtube Orchestra."
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