problem is...

There is a mediocre song but this nevermind-you-have-not-heard-of band called Deckard. The song is “1000 Things”. I like the lyric there’s a thousand things I’d like you to know…
To me, these words mean that he doesn’t know how to put it. The feeling is there but he cannot exactly express it. So, instead of failing to let her know all those things, he doesn’t say a single word. And he just stares at her…
Last night, I fell asleep at 4.30 in the morning. I had come back late and got myself into Bill Drummond’s 45, an excellent and hilarious book about pop culture in general, but in a very special autobiographical way… So when I turned off the lights, I didn’t expect that, half an hour later, my friend SP would call to wake me up and ask whether it would be alright to pass by.

- “But it’s five o’ clock man!”
- “Yeah, I know, sorry about that, but I really need to talk…”

So I told him it was ok and in less than five minutes the doorbell rang. He stepped into the mess I call the living room, and started talking about the love of his life and how he couldn’t live without her and what he was supposed to do, and how could he ever find the strength to go on and how much he wanted a second chance, how sure he was about not blowing it up this time around…
And there I was, tired as fuck, listening to the same old story and feeling sorry for this friend of mine but then again couldn’t help but having this thought that he was just playing miserable, whereas he was the only one to blame for what he jeopardized – and eventually lost.
He said that he couldn’t stand the fact that no other woman seemed to excite him, that he was seeing her in the street almost every day, although it was never actually her. He confessed that he really did try to get over it and accept the fact that life goes on, but found it impossible to forget all about it.

So far… it was ok for him to have woken me up – after all, he’s a true friend. But, to be honest, nothing in his speech gave me a good reason not to go back to bed. After all, as I said, it was not the first time he considered giving me all this story from scratch to be his only therapy. And, God, I needed to sleep…

But then his voice cracked and I saw a tear exploding and rolling… And that was it when I heard him say: “It’s just that… There’s a thousand things I want her to know…”
And I forgot all about sleep, and I wanted to hug him, because what he had just said was so nice and tender that I felt flattered. Flattered that he didn’t give a fuck about his masculine projection to me and just admitted a simple fact. But I didn't give him a hug, because someone had to keep the mascilune thing going, right? :-)

Then it was my turn and, to cut a long story short, I urged him not to do anything but call her up or pass by her office. “If there are so many things you want her to know anyway, what would it hurt to actually let her know in person?” And that was no word of wisdom, that was the sheer logic that anyone who’s not actually THERE can apply to situations like that.

He thanked me and closed the door behind him. There was no point for me to try and get some more sleep. It was time I went to work. But I remembered that song, managed to locate the cd and played it once. And, while I was listening to it, I recalled that moving sequence from “The Weather Man”, where Michael Cane gives one final lesson to his forty-something son:

“Things don’t always work out the way you predict it. Accepting that it’s not easy. It takes a lot of sacrificing.
Sacrifice is to get anything of value…
Do you know that the harder thing and the right thing to do are usually the same thing?
Nothing that has meaning is easy.
Easy doesn’t enter into grownup life.”

Nothing that has meaning is easy...
We’re grownups now, that’s a fact, our id’s and birth certificates being a testimony no one can ignore…
He misses her. A lot. I don’t know what he did about it. We haven’t spoken since that wake-up visit. But, if he took the courage to get in touch, then he can already consider himself a hero in my book. Whatever the result…
Because if there are a thousand things you’d like someone to know, then… why don’t just start today with the most important one? Life is short, you know. And, let me remind you, we’re all grownups. And time is limited in grownup life...