I want to tell you

 

" I want to tell you--

My head is filled with things to say.

When you're here--

All these things they seem to slip away."  

~George Harrison, The Beatles "I Want To Tell You" from Revolver

I'm remembering a time, around 2015 or so. I was struggling with Sharon, my job, life. The soundtrack of my life was mostly self-help books, to deal with my anger problems. Music was pretty much dead to me, and I to it. If it wasn't an audio book, it was a Coast to Coast AM broadcast playing in my ears non-stop, 24/7.

I was also on Facebook a lot in those days, as I had a lot of downtime at work. I began searching for old friends, desperate for any kind of re-connection to a previous time. I found a few, then a few more. One of my most treasured finds was Rienna, a long lost love from my Chico days. She was "the one that got away." Actually, they all were.  Apparently, I can't tie very good knots.

So, we started messaging on Facebook back and forth, remembering old times, catching up --"where've you been the last 20 years" kind of stuff. I started to feel alive again. Suddenly, I wasn't just this robot, this underappreciated, overworked caregiver. Someone remembered me. Someone that I'd had feelings for.

It never got too far out of hand or went to blatantly inappropriate places. We stayed in our own lanes. She was in a relationship, and I was, you know, married. Nonetheless, feelings and hormones filled my body, while fantasies, dreams and ideas swam around in my head. 

I developed quite an obsession over her and spent an inordinate amount of my free time writing to her. When I wasn't writing to her, I was thinking of her and of things I'd say to her (and the things I'd like to say, were it not for that whole pesky married caregiver situation I was in).

I wasn't about to leave Sharon, even though she'd begged me to at times. I was committed, and she, being bedridden, was stuck with me. But I had this thing growing inside me. A small fire that was like a coal, burning in my chest cavity. I had a case of longing and yearning. 

I remember one night in particular that I'd decided to put on my Ipod to fall asleep, instead of talk radio or an audio book. I played the Beatles Help!, Revolver and Rubber Soul albums and felt the electricity of their youthful energy. 50 year old songs made my 50 year old heart thump as I lay there, awake in the wee hours. Sharon lay sleeping beside me, oblivious to my condition, perhaps dreaming up fantasies of her own.

It was this song, "I Want To Tell You," that made me think of Rienna again. It was a day or two ago, I was playing some Beatles music, attempting to to re-ignite any kind of feeling in my dead, dried up old heart. I couldn't do it. The trick only worked the one time. But it reminded me of a time when I had thoughts and feelings about someone and how I would walk around saving up things to share with them. 

The fact that it was an old flame, and not my wife, only cements in a layer of guilt between the bricks that make my heart the impenetrable fortress that it has become. I think I have things to say sometimes, things to share, but alas, no one is here to listen. I write this blog to the wind, a sandcastle to be erased by the tide, deleted when Google decides to thin their data storage by removing useless ramblings like these.