How a 1950s Song Answered my Questions on Love

and restored my faith in love and life

This song came to me in the stillness of a sullen, summer evening.

I was in a sea of traffic, stuck in one of the car islands. Little, round rings of smoke emanated from my cigarette butt. Then, they swirled about in the thick, humid air and disappeared silently out of existence.

Like Love.

Love. It had 36 infamous meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary. All of them evaded me equally. I had survived the end of a decade long relationship. My first. My second one too was crumbling under the weight of frivolous expectations. Lost in the thoughts of an impending, messy breakup, I was staring into the nothingness of an urban slurry when the radio pushed out its next song. It was a love ballad from the 1950s, the radio guys pitched in.

I ignored it like the looming hot weather. As seconds passed, it slowly crept up to me from behind the leather upholstery of the sweaty car seat and perched on my shoulders, its legs dangling on either side. Two sides of love. On one side, the past two relationships, a clot of defective, discarded factory produce. On the other, a perfect one, waiting to be manufactured and cherished in a small mahogany box. In the middle, a head muddled with the concept of love, waiting intently for fate to provide viable explanations.

Evading the dangerous why-does-it-always-happen-to-me thought train and having nothing better to do, I amused myself with the song’s lyrics. I do that to all love songs. The song, “To Love Somebody” by Bee Gees, spoke of love as a shining light that never shone on some people. It went on to admonish love in my face, accusing me of not knowing what it’s like to love somebody.

Baby, you don’t know what it’s like To love somebody To love somebody.

Stop. Two careful accusations iterated twice for effect. I was offended. It is amazing how some songs can get to you. Filled with an evasive repulsion, I reached for the radio button to dismount the song weighing down on my shoulders. The song, a complete stranger in a sea of traffic had no right to convict me of being naive. I knew a thing or two about love. I was 27 and had emerged from a serious breakup (a second one on-the-way).

As if sensing the rising unrest in the car, the traffic signal beamed bright green in positive affirmation. Colorfully asking me to let it go. I pulled the windows down to drown the song while it lasts and sped away on the four-lane road, letting go of it behind me in a trail of dust. To push it back to where it came for me. Scared it would hunt me down, empty me of my preconceived notions love. And fill me up with its own.

It was almost ironic when the song came to me for the second time. I was going through the last of the remains of our relationship in the dark car. My second one. Alimony to the empty darkness that would engulf my life once he left. On the same stretch of the frequented road filled with traffic on busy weekday evenings.Now empty.

He tugged hopelessly at a tiny wisp of pleadings connected to my heart. I was facing the other way as if to pull it in the opposite direction. As minutes passed, hopelessness swelled in the atmosphere like an army of bystanders and the last of the hopes caved in. Warm tears washed my face. As he closed the door behind him with a bang, the glass windows of my heart’s house shattered into a thousand pieces and cowered on the car floor. Among a half-cigarette butt, a shoddy cotton swab, and stale bits of Subway honey-garlic bread. Remnants of the past. Why, I asked myself, as I bawled up in my lap, was I not able to hold on to someone? Too weak to take in the self-accusations pouring out as answers, I rolled up the windows and switched on the radio on.

A familiar love song greeted me. It was already half-way through. A half-eaten bun saving the other half for someone to split.

I want my life to be lived with you Lived with you

There’s a way everybody say To do each and every little thing But what does it bring If I ain’t got you, ain’t got?

It’s strange how these two sets of lines are part of two stanzas in theory but ring perfectly well. Like two encircling hands forming a hollow heart with their fingers.

What good does anything do if you get only half of someone, half of their being, half of their love? In the stillness of the autumn nights, the song made complete sense now. It asserted itself on me. If I didn’t want someone bad enough, and if someone didn’t want me that bad, what good would it do if I even got them? We would never cherish each other way we’re supposed to. The world had laid down rules of love and life. But if I didn’t love someone with all my heart to make it work with them, and if they didn’t love me enough to do the same, what good was such a love? Maybe that is why I didn’t know what it was like to love somebody yet.

I had never wanted anyone bad enough to make it work. And I had yet to come across someone brave, complete enough to make it work with me.

And so with this little nugget of reassurance, I fed my hungry heart with a glowing hope. A hope that if I wanted someone bad enough, and if they wanted me that bad too, we would make it work against all odds.

Despite the sea of unnecessary, noisy traffic around us.

As if one a cue, I brought down the windows once again. And this time when I whirred away, I took the song with me and kept it for life.

Follow me on Medium to read more of my stories.