Love is not forever and neither are you. Forever is make-believe and that’s okay too.
Like every emotion, your love will change. It can become a new love but it will never the be the same. You will not be who you were last year and your lover won’t be who you fell in love with the next.
If this sounds like the dark ramblings of a single man on Valentine’s Day let me correct you: I am in love and in an excellent relationship. I have a boyfriend who treats me like a prince. I am fortunate.
After a break up a few years back, I wrote a song to sum up the experience of love’s conclusion - it wasn’t about the situation but the feeling it was inevitable, another cycle had run it’s course.
I had been beating myself up for my inability to sustain an emotion before realizing the person I was when I felt that way no longer existed. I’d become someone new and even if the man I fell in love with was still somehow the same, I no longer recognized who he’d fallen for and couldn’t trust his love was meant for the new me.
The loss felt eerily familiar and when I wrote ‘Expiration Date’ I wasn’t thinking just of that particular end but of the temporary nature of…everything.
Now here I am years later - finally releasing the song in what feels like the first truly communicative adult relationship of my life and how awkward to explain that ‘Expiration Date’ is not about him but that I still somehow stand by every word? How can I get him to trust me and the love I declare for him?
My best hope is communication. If I explain these changes as they happen and he does the same then perhaps the love we’ve created can change with us. And the men we are a year from now will have a love that’s unique to them, just like ours today is special to who we are now, in this never to be repeated moment.
It sounded sad when I started but it sounds beautiful now that I’ve finished:
I loved you, for a moment or two,
there was nothing you could say or do.
I loved you. It was real at the time,
but I can't seem to maintain my mind.
I went through states that do have no words,
and I can't seem to bridge the divide.
I tried to. But I didn't see me,
I saw someone else playing make believe.
Sometimes I don't think I need anyone but me
Does time cement or grate away at my belief?
Our love has met the Expiration Date.
I had to admit this wasn't for me,
not situation, but fundamentally.
I failed to protect you from my wrath,
unintentional though ruthless distract.
If something changes after the fact,
it never happened. The past is the past.
If someone changes continuously,
they never were and they never will be.
Sometimes I don't think there is anyone for me.
Because time alters my sense of identity.
So now I can't trust anything I perceive or believe,
Anyone who claims to love or understand me:
My love has met the Expiration Date.