July 10: Writing Prompt #191-Earworm

Write whatever you normally write about, and weave in a book quote, film quote, or song lyric that’s been sticking with you this week.

You know how certain songs will stick in your head, and all of a sudden, you hear the song over and over again on the radio or TV too?  That’s what happened to me this week.  One of my favorite songs that I rarely hear on the radio kept popping up and on different stations to boot. Tracy Chapman’s 1996 hit, Give Me One Reason, took on new meaning for me the past few days.  I always liked this song, the beat, the words, etc…, but not because I really connected to it personally.  After all, in the years after this came out, I was in college and then getting involved in a relationship with my ex-husband, and these were the early days, the naïve days.  I wasn’t at a point in my life yet to understand what Tracy was really singing about. Now, I am. 

Three days ago, I celebrated my third wedding anniversary with my forever guy.  And I feel blessed and amazed to be so lucky. Marriage has its trials and tribulations, and it is forever changing as it goes through various stages in the participant’s lives, but I wouldn’t want to go through it with anyone but my husband now.  And I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt because of experience.

I was married previously, for 10 years, and it failed, despite my efforts to make it work for the kids and for my own pride.  I never wanted my children to be from a broken family, and I swore I wouldn’t get divorced as my own parents had done, but I was not prepared for my first marriage nor did I really know all that much about who I was marrying. 

Today, when I hear Give Me One Reason, it reminds me of the later years of my failed marriage.  I was desperately seeking a reason to stay, for my boys and to stay true to my own values about marriage, but I was so miserable, and that reason I was looking for never came.  Besides for my children, I had no reason to remain in that marriage.  And in the end, I didn’t want my boys to think that the husband-wife relationship they were seeing was what they should seek out for themselves. We were both terribly unhappy, and my emotional instability during that time was affecting my children too. 

I am so, so much happier now, and I don’t regret letting go of that marriage (as difficult as it was) because now my boys see what it means to be at peace and to have a healthy marriage and parental relationship.  I’ve carried a lot of guilt over the years because of my contributions to the failure of my first marriage, and there’s a part of me that will always carry an irrational fear inside that my marriage today will fail because of me and my inadequacies, but I am more confident and comfortable in my current marriage than I have ever been with anyone my entire life, and that’s a really good feeling.