Can't Make You Love Me

Are you ready to take a stroll into my tortured past? While going through some of the documents I have on my computer last week when I was working on avoiding my thesis, I came across something I had written following one of my more painful breakups. I had forgotten that I had even written this and with it came a torrent of old, sad memories. I've been feeling a little melancholy recently anyway, so I guess it's fitting.

It's actually a little hard to put this on here. I'm sensitive about it because it's so raw and personal to me, but I think it's an interesting read. Try not to judge too harshly. I think I was listening to a lot of The Cure at that time:

“So that’s it then?” I asked as I stood up, the only stinging, yet pathetic rebuke I could muster. She sat silent, unmoving. The gravity of this conversation seeming now to hit her as it had already struck me. My whole life for the last several years wrapped up in one single person, coming to an end, here, in this restaurant? Deep in my heart I despairingly acknowledged that this evening will probably be my last memory of being in her presence.

She still refused to move. She sat, frozen by the weight of the moment. I couldn’t stand it, I had to leave, but seeing her empty stare tugged on my years of devotion to her. Every emotion I could possibly feel in that moment teamed within me, creating a torrent of physical despair that I had nowhere to release. I wanted to scream, to yell, to hit, to explode - anything more than my quiet indignant rise from the table that did not even disturb the air, nor the conversations of any of the other restaurant patrons. Oh, to be anyone else in this establishment but me. At other tables, some couples were probably on first dates, some of them were probably married and just out for a weekend night, but at my table I was picking up the check for the last meal I would ever have with her. My gesture had formally ended this conversation, which cut her, wounds which consequently only returned upon me.

Was there nothing I could do to inflict any sort of anguish upon her that wouldn’t just reflect back onto me? No. Not after so much, not after spending years of fashioning one consciousness between the two of us. It is a strange thing, the hive-like mind that develops between people who are so dedicated to one another; any emotion that one experiences, happy or sad, joy or pain, is automatically felt by the other. This night would be no different.

We walked to the car, silent, leaving the restaurant with no remnants of our meal and without the comfortable familiarity we enjoyed when we had walked in. We had long ago seen passed the consolation of friendship that cannot form after the intensity of the relationship we had once enjoyed. As I opened her door, she stood frozen again, but tearful defeat hung in her eyes. I selfishly wondered how this could wrench her heart so much when this was her decision. I could only focus on my own raw emotion. Any objective understanding I might normally have became opaque from the cloud of pain that engulfed me.

We drove, parked, and then talked. None of the words mattered. The only memory I will carry with me of this night is how I did not want the several pain-filled and tearful hours to pass us both by as quickly as they did. Even when left with only the option of sadness to hold onto, it was better than the void that her absence would soon leave me. The evolution of emotional anguish into a physiological sensation was now complete.

I wrapped her in my arms and agony as we said goodbye. This embrace, what had grown to feel like the perfect combination of us together, would form a mold against which every other person would be compared, consciously or not. While I burrowed my head into her shoulder and then her neck, she kissed my neck and then my head, the last time I would feel her lips on me.

I left for home, utterly alone, at about 12:30am. The thought of lying awake on my bed with my dismantled heart terrified me, so I called Dave. Trying desperately to hold my voice steady, I asked if I could come over, but my stoicism soon failed me – my voice cracked and I had to sniff. I arrived to find that he and his wife had just gone up to bed. Always accommodating, he supplied me with company and words, words that helped to soothe even though the distraction from the rest of the night was minimal at best. It would be enough to allow me to go sleep, to wake up to my new and uninvited life.

Because the music I listen to so often matches my mood, when I go through these sad times, I always return to the sad songs. The saddest one, I think, is Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me. Some time ago, I read about the inspiration for the song. It turns out that the writer had read an article about a man who had been arrested for getting drunk and shooting his girlfriend's car. When asked by the judge if he had learned anything from the experience, the defendant replied, "I learned, Your Honor, that you can't make a woman love you if she don't." Is that not so sad? I think this is just about the saddest song ever. I can't even listen to it all the way through. It's just too depressing.

Anyway, here's the song: