As I carefully lift the perfect Stones verse in order to match my mood, it is time to share some of the thoughts and feelings that have come to define the direction of my life. As my new found friend and I sang our wounded souls out in the one too many tourist traps of the Crescent City, the opportunity to reevaluate my life rose quicker than that oil which was spewing out of the bottom of the Gulf.
After spending 12 years too many with she who demanded the material world, the past few years have served as a continuing education on the nature of relationships. having met all sorts of incredible women who were rebounding more than any offenses in the NBA, I had settled nicely in the role of the rebound guy. While not one to complain from the nice company I was able to keep, albeit in short spurts, eventually something more permanent was bound to make it's way. After all, dying alone is not much fun. I don't think anyone of us really dies alone. This is a myth that is promulgated by nursing homes in order to fill all their beds with the two fer sales more appropriate for a schooner of beer.
Understanding what makes me tick has been the one part that seems to regress when I get "involved" with another. Ever wrap your grease soaked fingers around a unhealthy hamburger on a daily basis and in a month wondered why not even the big boy pants you had squirreled away in the recess of the closet get stuck on your now cellulite laden knees. Well, a funny thing happens to me the way to the altar. By wrapping my life around the issues and tribulations of another which were existed when the relationship started, balance went out the window and the same old Sax reappeared. Rehashing the whole knight in armor thing is getting old, but Marley starts showing up quoting verses from past posts.(Sorry it is Christmas). The blame lies squarely on my burlap shoulders for going down paths from which I have to make a conscious effort to remove the police tape riddled red flags before I transverse.
There are not many blues songs that are premised on notion that I did myself and someone else wrong for going out with a woman who was not perfect for what I need. But this last relationship showed me that if I still overlook what is the obvious, by the time I listen to those sent to watch over me there is a great possibility that I will hurt someone who loves me.
This was not in the plan, but if in your heart there is a loose end, no matter how much you love someone, it could unravel the relationship. We have an incredible ability to lie to ourselves on many different levels and really believe at the time that somehow this will not come back to haunt us.
So, the moral, if any, is that no matter how many self help books you comb through in this lifetime, if at the end you continue to deceive yourself on what will truly make you happy and rely on other fallible humans for this notion, things are not going to end in Disney princess fashion. be honest with yourself and listen to what our inner voice says, don't contort it to fit your immediate need. Only then can you begin to fulfill your own journey, instead of riding someone else's horse to the show...
So Sez,
Sax
