Black
Mm-hm, and twisted thoughts that spin 'round my head. I'm spinning, oh-oh, I'm spinning. How quick the Sun can drop away?
If you’re new around here, all my writing these days includes a song title.
It’s sometimes what I am listening to, or it might be the inspiration for the writing.
You get bonus points if you know who it is…
Today it’s Black by Pearl Jam. Released on their 1991 album Ten, it’s a song that has recently come back into my life. The song is said to be about a first relationship ending, and it came into my life at the time of a first…
I know it’s a bit odd to mix personal and business in one Substack, but I feel it’s incredibly important to understand the interplay between the two. Understanding the feelings we have is important to what makes us tick in business, because although we like to think we can, we cannot separate the two. So this time it’s another personal one.
Let’s crack on.
The song is important today as it’s woven into the very threads of what I need to say. If you’ve not heard it, I suggest you go and have a listen. It’s a beautiful song, and Eddie Vedder’s voice is haunting.
It was a song that came into my life when I was at university. I seem to remember the album being on heavy rotation in most student houses. But one song, Black, always stopped me in my tracks. Literally, it still does now.
The song is about a relationship that has ended, and how, through the eyes of the narrator, everything has changed.
In my university years, I had a relationship, which I’ve talked about before here. Let’s be honest, it was an affair. I was already with someone else at the time. But that relationship was unfulfilling, and I needed to feel the things that were missing.
It was the first affair I had, and it burned big and bright, like the sun. It took me to places I had never been before in terms of how much someone could touch your soul.
He was everything. The love I had for him was all-consuming.
He shaped what I deemed to be attractive in a male, and it’s still here now, over 30 years later. Tall, dark hair, and bright eyes. Well educated, loved sport, particularly football. Music was his passion. He introduced me to things outside the usual student genres. We listened to everything from The Beach Boys to Nick Cave to The Sisters of Mercy (the latter was my addition!) He also introduced me to Julian Cope and China Doll, the subject of the linked blog, and ignited my passion for the ‘alternative’ side of life.
But it wasn’t to last.
Fate meant he had to go back home. In the days before mobile phones, it meant we lost touch. There was never a proper ending. There was never closure, and to this day, that still hurts.
For months, I was numb. I literally shut down internally.
Thinking back about it now, that was the time I got officially diagnosed with depression. It started my journey into prescription drugs (antidepressants) and alcohol. It also started a cycle of destructive behaviour which, somehow, I managed to survive.
But let’s be clear, none of that was his fault. It was because I was unable to deal with the loss. I didn’t have the tools I have now. The only thing I knew was to numb the pain, and as a student, that was cheap alcohol.
Now I realise that what I was experiencing was RSD, which I have spoken about here.
The thing with RSD is it hurts, it hurts like fucking hell. Like nothing you’ve experienced before. The pain is not only mental, but it also becomes physical. It takes over your entire being. Of course, I wanted to numb it with alcohol. Of course, I wanted to find someone to take away that pain.
So why write about this all again, and now?
Black has come back into my life. It’s played heavily on Radio X 90s, which I listen to while I am working.
For a long while, it was a song that I couldn’t listen to. Just the start of it would take me back, literally, to the bleeding core of the pain that I felt all those years ago. Time is a great healer, and until recently, I could listen to the song and not go back.
But…
In the last few months, my world has been shaken. I lost my Dad to cancer. I lost my job. The rollercoaster of emotions is starting to take its toll on me.
In therapy, I’ve been going back a lot to the time of this affair, searching. I don’t know what I am looking for. Perhaps I am looking for the happy ending? Or it could be the resolution that never really happened.
Ironically, these lines are the ones that are always stuck in my head… Ever since then.
I know someday, you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky
But why, why, why can't it be
Oh, can't it be mine?
He did. I checked, foolishly perhaps.
He married, and he had kids. He became the sun for someone else. He had the beautiful life.
And me?
They say history repeats itself.
That we keep being put into the same situation until we learn the lesson.
The lesson has not been learned, and there are many more stars in the sky. But this year, I have a feeling it is time to change the script. I am looking at EMDR, and perhaps finally I will stop searing… because the stars will always shine, won’t they?