Music Countdown: Take This Heart

I’m going to start the ‘music coundown’ with probably the most obvious song I can relate to this blog. The upbeat and emotional “Take This Heart” by Richard Marx.

Obvious, because it is where the name of my blog comes from. It was playing in my ears on the way home from work the night I decided that I wanted to write all of this. It is important to remember that I decided to start this site as therapy – I have always bottled my feelings for Maddie away, and getting my feelings out there – (even anonymously like I have) – has been massively important for my mental health.

So where does this song fit? It came out in 1992, so drops in some time after this post from back then, yet it was a few years until it started to relate to Maddie in my heart, probably somewhere around about here. Even with that, it has evolved over the years too.

I’ve been where you are before, no one understands it more, you fear every step you take, so sure that your heart will break, it’s not how the story ends, you’ll be back on your feet again.

Much like myself, Maddie has never really had a lot of luck in love, particularly in later years. She was always popular at school, and always seemed to have a boyfriend. I always seemed to be jealous, yet I was always happy for her – and while our friendship had its difficult moments across the school years, we were always fond of each other.

She just never seemed quite fond enough of me for us to get anywhere in any kind of potential relationship. So this first block of lyrics was almost me begging her to look in my direction. Myself understanding the pain of broken hearts, and wanting her to know I understood.

As the years rolled by, I’ve seen Maddie have her heart broken by boy after boy in her life. I would see her getting frustrated in her loneliness – all the while with myself sitting off to the side loving her, but never being able to love her.

She would be frustrated with that “why are all men like this?” in her mind, and I could never ever understand how any man could let her slip through their fingers. It used to break me to see her hurting, but for there always to be this thin wall between us.

I would never let her go.

The pain’s still alive in you, for what one man put you through, you say that we’re all the same, but I’m called by no other name.

Trying so hard to try and help her see that not all men are the same. That some of us just want to love and respect the people we care about. Frantically waving my hands for her to look at my beyond our friendship and really understand that I loved her and would be her partner and her equal.

Don’t keep a dream in you locked outside your door, just believe in this love, and don’t be afraid anymore.

Then in later years, reminding her that I’ve been here all along, waiting for her to come to realise we could easily be so much more.

Maddie was never going to “take my heart”. Nobody can take my heart. I was just saying that I was ready to give it. Unconditionally.

I need you to please be strong, I’ve waited for you too long.

Music Countdown: Something New

I’m going to start something new tonight. I want to get away from the ‘downer’ posts that I have written recently, and think of Maddie from a different perspective.

With Maddie still away in London, I’ve definitely been struggling, and have needed to find a new way to relate the positive energy I still have for her. She has been a source of heartache lately with her being so far away, but that’s only a matter of context.

What I have been doing is listening a lot to my “Maddie Playlist” on my phone when travelling to work most days. While a lot of those songs that I keep in that playlist relate to difficult emotions, to listen them in the context of how I feel about her has been massively soothing.

Even relating back to those more difficult emotions, it has helped me centre myself, within myself again.

So I want to write about all of the songs, one by one in that “Maddie Playlist”. Many of them will be songs I’ve attached to previous posts, and that’s okay – they have been placed in the posts to suit how those posts made me feel as I wrote them.

This will be more about the songs themselves and why I keep them in the playlist. Maddie and music have always gone together for me. She was a singer at high school, and I used to love listening to her voice.

Best voice in the world? Maybe not – but the best voice in my world, a voice that always made me feel better.

I hope that bringing together the songs themselves with how I feel about Maddie will help me focus again and feel a little less depressed about her being so far away.

I want everyone to know why those songs are important to me, and why they bring me closer to Maddie.

Sometimes the songs are “me singing to her”. Sometimes they are “her singing to me”. Sometimes they are just songs that grabbed me the first time I heard them. Some are happy, some are sad.

But they are always about Maddie and me.

Struggle Street

There is just too much distance in my life at the moment, and my head is in a lot of different places.

Maddie has been strangely a little less near the front of my mind. We still talk at least a couple of times a week, and still send each other silly and funny videos on social media.

I guess I’m now somewhat used to being without her nearby, so the pain isn’t as raw.

It still hurts, but I’m coping.

Except this weekend, I’m really struggling, and I have cried a fair bit.

Not for any specific reason, not even about Maddie so much. Just an intense loneliness and feeling of emptiness. I’m not even sure why I’m feeling that way.

I mean, they are fairly simple words to understand on the surface, and they are exactly how I feel right now, but there’s more to it and I don’t understand.

It almost feels like things were during my university years, when Maddie was around but we didn’t really keep in contact, at least not until she invited me to her birthday.

Of course, not long after that, we were not in any kind of contact for more than a decade.

I just can’t process things tonight.

It just hurts.

Physically.

Not to be close to anybody.

My son is sound asleep 10 metres away in his bedroom, and now that he is beyond his teen years, hugs and cuddles are different than when he was 10.

But I still feel like I am here alone.

I just want to be touched. Held.

It has been so long since I’ve felt any genuine affection that I’m scared I wouldn’t know what to do if the chance arose.

I’m scared I would make a complete fool of myself.

My cat is here – she’s even on the bed right now as I type, giving me goofy “put your laptop away” looks.

One day I will find someone, and more than likely it will not be Maddie.

But until that day…

Live Moment: Calmer Waters and Red High Heels

I have deliberately not written here for a little while, for just over two months in fact.

Not because I have had nothing to say, or haven’t had thoughts that I have needed to process, but not long after my last post, I found myself in a much calmer space than I’ve been for a while.

I still miss Maddie, and we still talk when we can – but obviously the 11-hour timezone difference can sometimes make that fairly difficult – one of us is usually in the middle of the night, and often just too tired to talk to the other in any coherent manner.

No, I’ve chosen not to write for a little while because I wanted to understand within myself, exactly what this calmer headspace was going to mean. Writing the various posts on this site are often heart wrenching, and always emotional.

I didn’t want to cloud up this headspace too much by picking and prodding at it by trying to put it all into words too soon.

I’ve been much better with everything. As I said, I still miss Maddie and she says she misses me, but the raw pain of her being so far away as faded somewhat. I can now see this whole situation as a journey. She’s been on the other side of the world for more than six months now. Her secondment to London is more than a quarter of the way through.

Feeling that the time is passing by is really helping.

It has hurt – but the time really is passing by. Every day she is away is another day closer to her return.

There is – however – a dilemma, as there always seems to be.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about moving back to Victoria. My employer has indicated that they would have no issue relocating my role from the Sydney office, to the Melbourne office.

I’ve been finding myself feeling the need to be closer to “home”, and closer to my family. I’ve been away from everything down there for a long time, so there’s definitely an appeal.

While Maddie is from Victoria too, her company doesn’t have an office in Melbourne. If I pack up and move down, what happens when she comes back? We’ll still be separated by distance. Sydney may very well be London.

We wouldn’t be able to just catch up for coffee at the drop of a hat. For me that would be a huge price to pay.

I’m very close to closing to make the move.

An unemotional view of the situation would be something like: “Maddie is with someone else, and you’re happy for her, so everything will be fine.”

Of course, that’s not how my head works – so I still have some thinking to do.

In the meantime, we chat as often as we can. I picture us sitting on a park bench chatting away for hours at a time. I picture her in her favourite red high heels. She’s the kind of girl who really loves to wear heels, but red ones have always been her favourite.

When I see other women walking around the city in red high heels, I do smile and think of Maddie.

But I’m doing good, and I feel okay.

Life is possibly turning another corner – will Maddie be around that corner however? Or will she stay on the other side of the street?

It is hard to know.

Comfortable Places

Christmas 2025 has been an interesting vibe in my head. Maddie and I spoke on the phone for about an hour on Christmas Day, and that filled my heart with joy.

Yet I just wish I could hug her tightly, even though that’s impossible right now.

I don’t often get home to Victoria to see family and friends, but this year I decided to do so, and headed back to my home town for the first time in a long time. I had moved interstate for work not too long after Dad passed away, and not long after that Maddie followed me.

I say “followed me” not because she was sticking close to me, but her work took her interstate as well, and we were about the only person each of us knew in our new city. Which is why we have gotten even closer over the last five years.

I saw family, I saw old friends, and it was great.

I also drove around in the rental car looking at special places in my life, as I was feeling nostalgic. I drove past the family home – (which was sold not long after Dad left us) – and it has changed quite a bit.

It was the house Maddie and I had called each other any number of times and had many warm conversations – but she never actually visited it.

I drove past her family home too, and it had barely changed. I remembered the night of her 21st birthday, and how it made me feel. Yet I also remembered how naive I was that night, when I didn’t understand she was seeing someone.

I also stopped by our old school, which always welcomes back old students. I went to the spot where Maddie had told me she loved me, so many years ago.

I reveled in the warm feeling of being back in that space, and remembering that moment – but I cried.

I don’t know if they were happy tears, sad tears, emotional tears, or distraught tears. It was probably a combination of all of them.

I miss that time, and I miss Maddie.

But I’m glad I went and visited that place – or was I just visiting that time?

Live Moment: Silent Heart

It has been some weeks since I have written. Frankly, I haven’t really had the courage to write too much, and my head and my heart are still in conflict.

Maddie has been in London for nearly 5 months, and it should be no secret nor surprise that I’ve been struggling with her absence. I’ve obviously been writing about that previously.

I am in a very strange place tonight as I write this.

Am I sad about Maddie being so far away? Absolutely I am, yet as I have spoken about in recent posts, I am so happy for her that she is living this adventure.

Yes, she is with her new man, and he is now over there with her. He is good for her, and I do like him a lot – he’s a genuinely nice man.

I hate being not able to call her up and have lunch or a quick coffee with her. We talk quite a bit – mostly in texts, but from time to time on phone too. Timezones make that difficult though.

I’m just confused as to where my heart lies right now.

It’s quiet silent in here at the moment – there’s not been any changes in how I feel about her, but the noise in my head is quiet. There’s still that deep pang of loneliness when I think about her.

It just feels…………………less consuming right now?

That’s happened before across the time we have known each other, so it is not a new feeling – but not one I was expecting to feel right now.

In many ways I do hope Maddie and her man stay together – I’ve seen with my own eyes how he makes her smile.

Whenever I’ve seen her happy with someone, there is something in me, some part of my love for her that just “switches off”. When she’s happy, I’m happy.

I don’t love her any less, but the mental side of it is less debilitating. I can function.

Lonely?

Yes, definitely.

However, the silence in my heart is just confusing.

I just want someone to hold me tonight.

Oceans Truly Apart

I’ve spoken previously about how Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting is one of the two main songs in my heart for Maddie, and how I felt it related to us.

I wrote how the very first line connected me to the song:

“Oceans apart, day after day, and I slowly go insane…”

…and how listening to Marx speaking about the song, it represented the physical distance between he and his wife Cynthia at that time. She was working on a movie overseas, and he was denied a visa to go and visit her.

They were literally “oceans apart”.

I connected the song with myself and Maddie because it was a time that we were very far apart emotionally, despite there being no physical distance between us at all. We still saw each other every day at school.

My ocean was the emotional distance I had managed to create between us via a series of really bad choices.

Maddie has now been in London for a few months, and as you can guess and can read here on this site – I am missing her terribly.

I have good days, and I have bad days.

I saw a post on Facebook from her last week about an event she had indicated as being “interested in attending”.

When I saw where that event was – that is, somewhere near London – I had a wave of pain wash over me. It was the first outward indication of where she really is. Of how far away she is.

We still talk of course, and we talk about London and how she’s enjoying her time there – but seeing her really connected to London via that post?

That kicked me in the guts. A lightning bolt of reality.

This time, we really are physically and truly – oceans apart.

A Limerent Question

It has been a little while since I have written, but I am in a place right now where I need to look inwards toward myself. I have been feeling very much not myself in recent weeks, while I’ve been getting used to Maddie being away in London for what it likely to be at least two years.

I am missing her terribly, and while we are still keeping in touch, a message from the other side of the world, and even a FaceTime call just isn’t the same as being able to call each other and book in a short notice lunch date with each other.

It hurts that I can’t just hug her.

I have however been taking time to think about my feelings for her. She appears to be more than happy with her man, and I’m still just her best friend. That’s not a complaint, but right at the moment it does make me sit up and ask questions of myself.

I’ve have gone through many different trains of thought about “what this is” between Maddie and I, and as varied as those strands of emotional processing have been, I keep finding myself asking the same question of my heart.

Is what I feel for Maddie nothing more than limerence?

If you understand the ‘textbook’ definition of what limerence is, and you read my entire site, limerence seems like quite an accurate description of my headspace around Maddie over the years.

It makes sense. I cannot deny and will not deny that most of how I see Maddie could and would be adequately described as a case of limerence.

And that is hard to accept – because it makes me wonder if the 40 years of emotion I have felt for Maddie have all been for nought – because they have never been reciprocated in any truly meaningful way.

It physically hurts to recognise that correlation inside of me. While I have lived and loved other women in my life, and love them with all of my heart – (for what it has been worth) – it makes me feel like a silly little child not being able to let go of his first silly crush.

On the contrary, the psychological descriptions of limerence you can find online talk about the feelings for another person being unrequited. That when one is in a state of limerence over someone that you do not concern yourself with the well-being of the other person.

That limerence isn’t real love – more that it is an obsession or infatuation with the other person, and that it only exists in the mind of the person who is feeling limerent towards the other person.

That it is the fantasising of being with the other person, without it necessarily being a physical or even a sexual need. The pleasure comes from the obsession or infatuation.

Which is where I find myself doubting that my feelings for Maddie are purely limerent.

I do feel the need to be physically close to Maddie, and although the thought scares the shit out of me, the thought of being sexually intimate with her is very much a part of me – yet I would be so scared of disappointing her in a sexual encounter.

I do care how she is feeling, and we have always been close. Just read this site and you should be able to understand that.

Although we’ve never found ourselves romantically linked, there have been any number of times over the years where that was close to happening. I’ve never felt that she didn’t love me, even if the romantic feelings we have both had for each other haven’t turned into anything substantive.

There are many aspects to the long relationship between Maddie and myself, and I cannot explain away all of the “features” of limerence from how I feel.

Like I said, that hurts. I can’t rationalise 40 years into a simple explanation like that – and I am currently trying to keep an open mind about it

I love Maddie, and Maddie loves me – we care deeply about each other, and are always looking out for each other.

I think and hope that that’s the difference.

However, the thing is – whether it be limerence or not – that doesn’t mean we will ever end up together, that the romantic feelings will ever be reciprocated.

It’s the classic “we could, but should we?” question.

That’s a question I’ve spent 40 years trying to answer.

Emotional Dilemma

I’ve been wondering the last couple of weeks whether or not it would be a good idea to just take some time off work, jump on a plane to London and surprise Maddie for her birthday next month.

I’m genuinely in pain since she left for London, and I’m not coping.

The romantic in me wants to just do it. Just unfold my credit card and deal with the cost later. I am missing her terribly, and I’ve not missed her birthday in a long time.

The sensible man in me tells me not to be silly. Stick to my personal values of never interfering with her relationship by dropping a big romantic emotional act upon her.

It’s been a real dilemma.

I’ve decided not to do it – the problem would be that if I did do it, I would suffer just as much when I flew home again.

I had a very deep and personal dream about her last night – we were together for her birthday. It was wonderful, but sad too. It made my decision not to go easier than it might have been.

A week of high excitement, then back home to Australia to suffer again.

Sigh.

I just sit here and wonder if she ever thinks about me on any kind of deeper level.

Live Moment: Those Blue Eyes

As I write this live moment tonight, I’m starting to feel a little better about things. I still miss Maddie deeply and profoundly – but now that she’s settled a little, and we’re talking even though we are half a world apart, I can feel our closeness again.

I hate that I can’t just call her up and have lunch – but she’ll be back one day.

I’ve actually just been reading back through the posts on this site, and joining dots in my head – thinking about some of the blanks I want to fill in. Colouring the story in between the lines, so to speak.

When I read back, naturally by mind locks back into how I felt at the various points along the journey, and the twists and turns of the road.

Tonight one thing the really became clear was how unlucky Maddie has been in love. I don’t mean to make it sound like there have been dozens of men in her life – (because there simply haven’t been) – but the various men who have come along all have seemed perfect for her at first, or at least, the ones I have met myself over the years.

She’s been engaged a couple of times, but never gotten married. The men have seemed to me to all have been quite different from one another – Maddie doesn’t seem to have “a type”.

Things seem to go well for a while – and suddenly she’s single again. She rarely says anything about it, her photos on Facebook just suddenly start including herself only.

I never ask. I know she would talk to me about it if she wanted to and/or needed too. I would also never pry.

Yet tonight, I’m just sitting here simply not understanding how they have all allowed her to get away.

How could anyone let this amazing woman get away from them?

I know that pain because I’ve managed to let her get away any number of times – and so I get how crazy they have been to let her get away too.

I look into Maddie’s magnificent blue eyes, coupled with the warmest smile you could ever know, and feel the kindest heart in the world.

Yet, just like me – so often she ends up alone.

I’ve never wished it upon her, even if it gave myself more chance to have chance with her again. Her current partner seems to me to be a really great guy and I wish the best for them, even if it gave myself less chance to have a chance with her again.

Yet selfishly, there is a tiny little part of me that wishes it on my loneliest nights – but I’m not going to be the catalyst.

If we ever end up together, it will be because we find each other – not because one of us forced anything.

Tonight I just see those blue eyes. and the pain she hides behind them – I just hope she doesn’t end up alone ever again.