Countdown

There are 2 posts filed in Countdown (this is page 1 of 1).

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.