(This is a copy. For the original post visit DavidGillespie.com)

Being someone of the "singer/songwriter" persuasion, one of the staples is the casual observance of all things relationship. I have for most of my years done this from the point of view of somebody very much not in relationships, on account of the fact that things seemed much simpler without them. Sure, there were compromises to make, but the upside seemed, for the most part, to seriously outweigh the down. Call it selfishness or simply solitary refinement, it worked and worked well. For me anyway.

Sitting now in the dull-glow of a post-relationship warzone, my first for quite some time, it's kinda like waking up from some kind of long over-extended yet somehow desired sleep. Everything feels just one extra step removed from reality, like a glass on a table just a foot away I will never the less have to travel two feet to pick up. My time is all my time, which is kinda how it always was. And the part of me that speaks only in my voice, sees only what I see and hears only what I want to hear, digs that.

The other part of me is quite the opposite, reborn into this place it wasn't sure at one point it would need to spend any more time in. There's a deep sigh, an acknowledgement of some inevitability, and a post rationalisation that somehow we were always going to be back where we started. I imagine there's varying levels of truth in that, but for now it suits my needs, and as my needs are the only ones that need suiting, it sits as a self-evident truth, not one open to debate.

In the aftermath though, weird associations get made with the relationship recently exited. I have had my heart broken a handful of times, and when once was enough, the others exist to re-enforce a point made perfectly well the first time, that in agreeing to expose on any level the scars earned in battles prior, books written to be read by nobody, you offer yourself up willing to earn another, to etch another chapter. Maybe an entire tome.

At no point however in my somewhat checkered romantic history has the benefit of hindsight somehow built a platform that allowed the road traveled with someone to be smeared, the memory tarnished or their character stained. To do so, to walk away from a relationship and defile the person you spent your time with I find not just insulting but unfathomable. Given the choice between re-working someone's memory into a distorted fiction and facing in the harsh light of day that they didn't want me, I have chosen the latter each time. That's my choice and not an easy one, but the only right thing, because to do otherwise is to render one of you a liar and the other an idiot, not only belittling both of you but ruining any notion that what you once had was something you might like to have again someday with someone else. All I can do is hope for different endings to future versions of the relationships that didn't work out, and trust that one day I get another shot at getting it right.

John Mayer, a musician who draws plenty of snickers from my friends but whose writing I thoroughly enjoy, has an unreleased song he played the first time I saw him, This Will All Make Perfect Sense Some Day. It contains the following line:

To all the hearts I broke, and the ones that once broke mine, I've got suspicions all will be forgiven in time

Maybe there's some truth in that, and I imagine it varies depending on who you're talking to. I'm hoping there is though, and I'm hoping it extends outside my 6 feet of existence and into the 5′8″ frame of someone considering a re-working of our own tragic fairytale. History may be written by the victors, but in the case of two people winding up losers I don't mind going quietly. As quietly as one can go in 600 words anyway. That's not a stab at self-righteous, it's not a stab at right at all. It's a quiet crossing of fingers.

In the hope that all will be forgiven in time.

Visit DavidGillespie.com for more.

David Gillespie on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace