Is It Getting Better, Or Do You Feel The Same?

One Love
One Life
When it's One need in the night
One Love
You get share it
It leaves you baby if you don't care for it

One of the best, most perfect songs ever written is that one - "One" by U2. Musically, lyrically..it truly is one of those songs that The Edge said seemed to "arrive." It's a song, a vibe, a feeling that seems to have lingered in the earth and sky until someone pulled it down and put it to human voice and sound. That and a song that Axl Rose allegedly played in his limousine over and over and over and over when his girlfriend broke up with him.

I'm drawn to the song deeply today for a multitude of reasons. One of my best girlfriend's boyfriend broke up with her yesterday. She's devastated because it happened right at that crescendo of a relationship - the moment where you realize you've fallen for someone. He's moving away and while the feelings are strong for her, they aren't strong enough for him to put a stop to his pursuit of his own happiness.

You say love is a temple
Love the higher law
Love is temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
Then you make me crawl

So I accompanied her to a local restaurant to keep her company and listen to her cry and wonder how someone could walk away from the possibility of love. As a cruel twist of fate, we happened to get seated next to a couple who were clearly on a first, blind date. Their converation was loud but seemed louder than it might have been because the converation was cruel to my friend's sad soul. The woman was quite something, with boobs as big as basketballs falling out of her dress and saying glib nonsense like, "My friends all like me for my personality, wit and charm." Who says things like that, seriously? It hurt my friend to hear their conversation. She kept asking me, "Is this what I'm in for? Starting over like that with some cheesy conversation?"

Is it too late tonight
To drag the past into the light?
We're One but we're not the same
We're to carry each other.
Carry each other.
One.

I confessed to her that I was having similar feelings listening and watching this spectacle of a first date. I am terrified that I could soon be facing punching that same restart button and sitting in a restaurant with a stranger trying to convey who I am in a few simple, flirty sentences. And that thought terrified me, though she already has to push the restart, reboot and start over. The couple's conversation was like rubbernecking a god awful accident. When I think about my own situation, I know I can create that situation for myself. No matter what, the abandoned little girl will never believe she deserves love. She will always believe she deserves what she got - loss.

We left the restaurant and went to her mother's house to clean out more things. Her mother passed away recently and the long slow process of removing the remanents of a powerful life and love is still a part of my friend's daily life. It's a difficult task for me, because my friend has the same trio of rare diseases that killed my mother. To be there as she sorts through her dead mother's life with her frail blue hands is almost like standing at the axis of the circle of my own life. I'm the child again, watching life repeat itself in someone else's world. I always known she was brought into my life for a reason.

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters. Brothers.
One life but we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One...

When I drove home, I was compelled to put "One" on my iPod and fall inside the song. I know why I am the way I am - I was twelve years old packing up dresses, jewelery, papers with handwriting on them, shoes, eyeglasses, watches, make up and hairbrushes of a woman who gave me life and protected me from everything and anything that tried to step between a mother and a daughter. My friend is ten years older than I am and a mother of teenagers and I watch the how hard it is for her to deal with this and I wonder how in God's name did I get through it at 12 years old? That experience bore a frightened, broken, self-protective girl whose only truth might be expecting a loss of the fiercest, strongest and most tender love. That broken girl has stabbed every happiness in the back and she knows no man, no one person can ever stop her except the woman who she lives inside. I've never fought harder than I have these weeks to not allow it to happen to me again, to render me alone with words unspoken, touches that have not been extended and sitting on a dreadful first date trying to convey this whole life into a summary of my wit and charm.

Yes, One is a powerful song. The most powerful I know because it speaks to me on all these levels of the holiest of love and most sordid and earthly of love. But no part of that song rings more true than these and for that, I can say no more and no better.

I can't be holding on to what you got
When all you got is hurt