Thursday Therapy: Ever Closer

Listening today to Dan Fogelberg’s Netherlands CD, as I often do since it is probably my favorite album of his, I got stuck on one song, a song I know well, a song I can sing from heart, and yet a song with words that made me stop and pause today, to remove focus from my spreadsheet, close my eyes, and just listen.

Promises Made
by Dan Fogelberg

Promises made and promises broken
Measures of our demise
Secrets of souls that rarely get spoken
Pleasure's a thin disguise

Dozens of ways and dozens of reasons
Shielding our hearts from pain
Riddles of romance
That distance may yet explain

Certain of nothing
So fearful of love
Nobody seems to show you enough
Over and over the scenes are replayed
And once again those promises made

Feeling forsaken, broken in two
How did this ever happen to you
Taken for granted, bruised and betrayed
Lonely survivors these promises made

Dozens of ways and dozens of reasons
Shielding our hearts from pain
Riddles of romance
That distance may yet explain

Certain of nothing
You're so damn fearful of love
Nobody seems to show you enough
Over and over the scenes are replayed
And once again those promises made
Those promises made

Dan wrote more than beautiful music. He wrote music that actually said something, that held stories so meaningful to me and I’m sure to others. Anyway the song lyrics above are where my head is today, and it is heart wrenching to me. It sums me up quite well I think.

I spend a good deal of time and effort trying to shield my heart from pain. Yet my efforts don’t work. Over and over, I turn in the wrong direction and end up with more and more pain. Over and over I fuck up my life better than anyone else could ever do to me.

Okay Freud, next Tuesday it ain’t gonna be that easy session like last time. We’re heading back into the muck that is my psyche. We’re gonna continue working on ferreting out what’s driving me and how to change it. I feel it. It is close. It is very close. Yet I still can’t quite open that lid and really take a look at it. I get so close, and my mind runs away refusing to look. But I’m closer than ever before, and I do feel we’re nearing a breakthrough. It’s there, that something, oh yes, it is definitely there, and getting closer to becoming clear. I am terrified.