I love most music but country music has a way of speaking to my heart and soul. That’s what I listen to in my car. Some of it is just silly – like when they talk about loving their tractors and trucks, why don’t we get drunk and screw, I ain’t as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was, I’m a redneck woman I ain’t no high class broad. Those songs make me laugh and ease the traffic snafus during rush hour.
Occasionally a song will reach into my chest and touch my heart. Songs like “I’ve had my moments” or “Anyway”. I can relate to most of the words and the emotions. I understand.
Then there are songs that are like tuning forks in my soul. They resonate deep within me and cause long hidden emotions to wash over me like giant waves on the shore – dragging me under and forcing me to struggle to regain my balance.
Trace Adkins song “I just want to feel something” is one of those songs.
If you’re tellin me I’m not on fire
You’re just preachin to the choir
I’ve gotten dull as old barbed wire from livin
Last night I watched the evening news
It was the same ol nothin new
It should have cut me right in two
But it didn’t, I don’t know why it didn’t
But I wanna feel somethin
Somethin that’s a real somethin
That moves me, that proves to me I’m still alive
I wanna heart that beats and bleeds
A heart that’s bustin at the seams
I wanna care, I wanna cry, I wanna scream
I just wanna feel somethin
If you’re tellin me that’s just how it is
I don’t buy it cause once I was kissed
By a red-headed girl with cherry lips
On her porch when I was sixteen
And I felt it somewhere in my soul
And time stood still and I couldn’t let go
I cant tell you cause I don’t know how I got so cold
When did I get so cold
[Chorus:]I just wanna feel somethin
Somethin that’s a real somethin
That moves me, that proves to me I’m still alive
Run my fingers through your fingers,
Across your face and through your hair
And close my eyes and breathe you in like air
I just wanna feel somethin
How did he know what I was thinking? The first time I heard it during the afternoon drive home, I cried like a baby.
The inability to love or feel deep emotions about another person is nonsensical to most people. They smother you with platitudes and tell you the “right” person just hasn’t come along yet. I understand that they mean well and have learned to just smile and nod. If the solution was simple, I would have done it long ago. My commitment phobia runs deep.
I once reached a point where I was so hardened to intimate relationships emotionally that I was in danger of having it creep into the other relationships in my life. I realized that I needed to do something drastic to stop the cycle. Finally I couldn’t stand the pain anymore. I was going through the endless cycle of abandonment and rejection so often I totally lost my perspective on the reality of my situation. So to stop the cycle of poor choices and bad relationships I gave up men for a while.
It’s been several years now - several happy, peaceful years of self reflection and introspection. It’s been a time to regain my self esteem, my idealism, and my inner calm. But, one of the consequences of this cleansing process has been a dramatic increase in my inability to feel something. The happier I am in other areas of my life, the less willing I am to risk falling back into the drowning sea of relationships.
Every year I add a few more bricks to the wall around my heart – making it higher and less scalable. Then someone like Trace Adkins comes along and tries to put a hole in my wall. Right now I’m still reaching for the bucket of mortar to repair the hole. I want to feel something, but I'm just too scared.
Are you beginning to understand what commitment phobia FEELS like yet?
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8 comments:
I'm okay with the committment phobia; it probably serves you well. (It serves me well.) But does refusal to commit necessarily require the suppression of feelings?
I will never commit to a romantic relationship again. Never, never, never. Yet I fall in love (loosely speaking) all the time.
Sometimes you're faced with a simple choice - stay put after years of co-hab [I shall always remain single!] or marry and move with him [because the new job won't pay for non spouses to move]
12 years later, I still feel a bit jet lagged.
Very best wishes
prefers,
Are you really in love even loosely speaking, or just in love with the IDEA of love? Or is it just lust?
Maddy,
Jet lagged?
Oh, sure, it's lust. But it's also fondness. I can say "I like you" and "I care about you" and "I want to spend time with you" and "You matter to me," etc., but never "I'm committed to you."
I think you can separate the two. I think you can feel deeply about a person and not owe anything to the person (or however else you define committment).
Be wary of structured relationships all you want (I'm sure as hell wary of them). But don't be wary of feelings.
The problem with saying all those things to another person is not in what you mean when you say them but in how they interpret them. Too often when you say those things, the other person is starting to mentally skip down the aisle to the house with the white picket fence.
How many people who aren't commitment phobic really understand it? How many of them understand that you will probably not be around for the long term? Is it fair to them to allow them to think there might be a future where none exists?
Just some things to consider.
You got me there. That IS the danger. And when you show your hand (you're not going down that aisle) they get PISSED.
But not all of them.
There are no easy answers here. Only you know who you truly are and what you can handle. The inherent problem for those of us who know and freely admit we are commitment phobic is how we handle those who aren't.
Most commitment phobes usually don't consider what the other person is thinking or feeling or how deep they are into the relationship until the line has already been crossed, and the line is very, very fine.
I say never, never again as well.
In my heart of hearts I know I leave a gap in the wall in case a miracle comes my way, because I'm a romantic deep inside.
The outer cynic, the scarred, protective part, wants no part of commitment, doesn't believe in the miracle, and just wants peace, quiet and solitude. No more drama.
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