No Words for How I Feel
The distress of my heart has grown great. From my straits bring me out. See my affliction and suffering and forgive all my offenses. Psalm 25:17-18 Robert Alter
Distress – Life handed you baggage. Some of it becomes yours before you were born, but when you arrived, no one told you that you inherited your mother’s trauma or your father’s struggles. Instead, they said, “Oh, look, he’s got his mother’s eyes. Oh, wow, do you see how much she looks like her father?” Cute, but insufficient. What really makes you who you are are the invisible bundles of stress given to you by the past. I’ve got a load perfectly designed to burden me. Not too light so I can simply discard it. Not too heavy so I end it all. Just enough to keep me down—until I come to terms with it or pass it on to my children. That’s the idea behind the Hebrew word ṣārôt, i.e., the ties that bind, and not in a good way. Lately I’ve been unwrapping some of those neatly packaged destroyers. One especially critical one is my lack of emotional connection.
I’m emotionally challenged. In less politically correct parlance, “I’m an emotional mess.” I lack the immediacy of emotional awareness. It often takes me a long time after the event to really experience the emotional impact. It takes even longer to process it. Five years ago, on my birthday, I was flying at 35,000 feet somewhere. I don’t even remember where. All I know was on that important, mile-stone birthday, I was completely alone. Up in the air. No one could even call me to wish me “Happy birthday.” It took several days for me to realize how tragic it was to be alone on that day. It has taken several years to understand why.
So, I’m offering this song. CLICK HERE. I don’t even know what all the words mean because they are Spanish. What I know is that this song is an emotional connection for me. I first heard it a long time ago during another one of those lonely experiences. It still makes me cry. It’s a romantic ballad about sleeping alone. The power of the rhythm, the romance of the words, the syncopation of the beat—they all take me back to those empty nights far from the ones I loved, struggling with my own demons. It’s a tragic, desperate love song for me, like other songs that bring back those traumatic moments. Crosby, Still, Nash and Young – Woodstock – standing in the window of the tiny apartment in Glenview, weeping because my life was so derailed. Stevie Ray Vaughn – Life Without You – sitting on the Pacific beach in El Salvador, weeping again because the same demons still roost in the inner spaces of my heart. Eric – It Hurts Me Too. And Anthony Santos – Durmiendo Solo which started all this. Songs of abandonment, hopelessness, broken love. Musical milestones marking my memories. “All of those moments lost in time like teardrops in the rain” (Bladerunner).
I need some other songs. Songs of wonder and joy. Songs of restoration and recovery. Not the kind of songs I usually hear in the “Praise and Worship” minutes but songs of redeemed tragedy, of heartbreak repair. Like this: Eric – Running on Faith. Dancing in the living room with my three-year-old daughter standing on my feet—one of the happiest moments. I hope that someday I will dance with her again at her wedding. More tears. I don’t know what the rest of the desperately needed songs will sound like, but I am sure that when I hear them I’ll feel it.
Topical Index: emotions, stress, binding, ṣārôt, music, Psalm 25:17-18
