Deep Breath

“You never forget your first.”

There’s a reason for that.  We waste our best love on our first… a relationship doomed by its very definition to failure.  Like the first time doing many things, we don’t know enough to be afraid.

My philosophy regarding first love, or at least the first love that results in the first marriage is: get ready.  It will fail.  My first marriage failed.  My current husband’s first marriage failed.  My Mother is on marriage two, Baby Cousin: two, my Aunt is on Three.  My father finished three… and ran out of idiots he could con into marrying him.

The agency I work for deals in personal statistics: birth, marriage, death.  I can tell you marriages: 5, 6, 7… are not uncommon—serial believers in The One… Or at least The Current One. Mr Right… Mr Right Now.

When conversing with a friend years ago, I gave my philosophy out off-handed and immediately tried to backpedal as she was a newlywed – not even a full year under her belt yet.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  Uhhh, I’m sure that won’t be you…”  She smiles sadly.  “We’re getting divorced.”  My theory holds.

You don’t know what to be afraid of, but you also don’t see what you want – it could be as simple as not wanting it to end with another person’s hands around your throat… like mine did.  You know that love feels incredible.  First love?  Bottle it, and you’d be a billionaire.  Heart galloping, pupils constrict, “A stolen look/Turning into a gaze.”  To be at the center of another person’s regard is the most intoxicating feeling imaginable.  I guess that’s why I’ve latched on so hard to Jesse Daniel Edwards’ “Everything Makes You Sick” from his brilliant recently released “Violensia.”

The line that hooked me is: “Was all the time we spent in my bedroom/Just chemical relays In my mind?”  Reward, desire, addiction, euphoria.

Short answer:  Yes.

Lust propagates the species.  Love holds the tribal unit together.

“I want it to feel like this forever.”  ‘He’ said this to me.  And it didn’t.  It can’t.  And there’s nothing to blame for that.  Chemicals stop working.  Too much of a good thing is never enough.  But it has to be or the human race would never get past the disappointment.

“And to every broken heart that came before,” Jesse sings.  Because this – heartbreak – is nothing new.  But it’s new to you.  It’s new when it’s the first time — regard is withdrawn, ripped away.  Their eyes don’t look at you anymore.  “A stolen kiss/That dies unreturned…”  There is no pain like the first time in every sense of those words.

I’ve listened to this song dozens of times at this point.  I’ve taken it upon myself to input lyrics for Musixmatch (that eventually cross-references and ends up in Spotify.)  It’s like getting elected to public office just to fix that pothole by your house… I just really, really like lyrics.  There was nothing like lying in bed, “new” old vinyl in hand, poring over lyrics and liner notes as a teen (even then, I was a generation too young, but latched on to vinyl when my counterparts were embracing the new fad of CDs).  I’m delighted this experience has made a comeback in recent years.

What I’ve learned doing – lyric cataloging – is to listen to everything, not just lyrics.  The critical thing in this song – just as crucial as the heart-rending refrain “I’m gonna be just fine/Everything makes you sick in time” is the deep breath, almost gasp after each chorus.

Everything makes you sick.

What did we just spend years hearing? “Meh, you gotta die of something.”  What weren’t we allowed to do?  Breathe.  A deep breath was likened to the ragged breath of the reaper assigned to unprotected sex of the 80s.  We spent two years Lysol-ing our groceries, wondering if a deep breath would put us in the hospital, on a ventilator, or… six feet under.  Over a million people in the United States alone paid for the most basic human act of survival with their lives.

We breathe, we love… we fear… We are human.

“Everything makes me sick/Oh it all just makes me sick/And there’s no cure”

The only cure for the human condition is death (what did Jim Morrison croon? No one here gets out alive). So while we are here, while we do this: love, fear, hurt, hope, bleed, gain, lose… Deep breath.  Hold on.  While you fall, you have a moment of weightlessness that feels like flying. 

Everyone dies of something.

Take a chance.

Tell them you love them.  Feel it. 

There will be a dash between two years on your headstone.  That dash is your breath.

Breathe deep.