The Back Is Pain

The Back Is Pain

I never thought fulfilling a lifelong dream would end up breaking my heart. Never thought something unreal, something that never happened, would hurt so much.

           We loved that band. It was ours. When we started dating we discovered, of course, some affinities, music we both liked. Also, bands and singers I showed her, plus bands and singers she showed me. But this band was special because I first listened to them when she and I were already together, and then we really got into them together. They came up in a local radio station while I was driving. I remember it vividly: that song, the first one I ever listened to. I could even pinpoint the year, perhaps the month. Someday I will. When this ache is over.

           That doesn’t sound like much, does it? Pinpointing the year? The fact is I am thankful for my bad memory. I mean, there are things I think about obsessively, so I feel lucky for forgetting most dates and for not being able to remember, all of a sudden, what year things happened. Sometimes I might tell you whether something happened this year or the previous one. And that’s it.

           So I do not recall the year, but I do remember many details about how I discovered “our” band. I was on my way to physiotherapy. My back was killing me those days. I had just divorced my second wife. All the hopes, the anticipation, the resolution not to make the same mistakes as the first time… This time I would be patient, not judge, not isolate myself…

           My back was killing me those weeks. I was carrying too heavy a burden, of course. I used to despise those comments, that holistic shit: “your sight is poor because you don’t want to see reality, you’re losing your hair because you are intrinsically afraid, you had that accident because you want to punish yourself.” After several months in physio, I had to accept it. I was feeling so fucking guilty… And my back was paying the dues.

           In retrospect, I do not know how I recovered. In the end, I felt cheated by those chiropractors with their electric nodes and overpriced pillows and overpriced massages, and got the sense that the real help I got was from a masseuse who told me just that: “you’re carrying a heavy burden.”

           So I was driving to that fancy clinic when I turned on the radio. It was pure luck, because I rarely listened to that station, or the radio at all, for that matter. And there it was, “that fine, fine music”, as Lou Reed once put it. I paid attention to catch the name of the band and when they mentioned it I got a bit puzzled. It sounded incomplete. Like an interrupted phrase, like and adjective without a noun. You know what I mean.

           The backache, the sensation of decline, the frustration of not being able to work my way out of depression at the gym, all of it adds details to the scene in my mind. By that time Sofia and I were going from a casual encounter to regular encounters, we were going steady or something like that.  

           So the band with an incomplete name became very special to us. We kinda discovered them together. My enthusiasm listening to those new songs was hers, too. Later on, when we were steady, this time really steady, making plans for the future, feeding each other’s dream of a life together, they came on tour to our God-forsaken, tour-forsaken city. We were thrilled. I cannot remember just now how I learned about it, how I got the tickets. Did she tell me they were coming? Did I tell her? How did she react when I gave her the tickets? I don’t remember. I’ll leave it that way. Better not to remember some things.

           That first concert was all we expected, and more. The second one, over a year later, the dream turned into a nightmare. A persistent one. One that goes on and on, even after you’ve woken up, to the point that you’re not really sure you are awake. Or alive, for that matter.

           Soon after the first concert, I went abroad for a whole year. I was utterly excited to go abroad to study Art: a lifelong dream, you could say. Everything was falling into place. I invited her to come visit, but she said it was alright to wait. Promises were made, plans were planned. But when I got back she had changed. I never really understood why, how. Still don’t.

           I spent months and months wondering, regretting, and stirring my despair up with the music we used to listen together. And then they came back to town for the second time. It was one of those occasions that should have been happy, stupidly happy, and wasn’t. I knew she was going to go. She knew I was, too. Ever since I knew about the concert I thought out possible scenarios. It was the same venue, and approximately the same time of the year. So I already had the setting for my detailed, useless thinking. Obsessive thinking. What if she was there with a fucking new boyfriend? What if I saw her and she didn’t? Would I approach and say hi, as if nothing had happened? What if she saw me and I didn’t? Would she get in touch to say “I saw you there at the concert”? What if I decided to protect myself (or try to) by inviting some other girl?

           I also considered the possibility of simply not finding her in the crowd. In those weeks of anticipation I came to think of the concert as a farewell, some kind of exorcism; a closure, in a sense. I would torment myself for a couple of hours, would remember that first concert. Same venue, same fucking time of the year. Perhaps I would cry my soul out, would dry my heart to pieces. And then, farewell.

           But you really never, never anticipate those things. Not ever. In the end, when the crowd was dispersing and I thought I was safely disappointed for not running into her, fate spat on my face once again. I was in a hurry, trying to catch the last train home, when I saw a skinny, awkward-looking girl waking ahead of me. She looked around for some reason and her face looked quite familiar. I had seen her before, but where? I walked faster, trying to get ahead. She felt it, looked back and saw me. She recognized me immediately. The expression in her face was almost horror. Just then I noticed she was with another girl. When this other girl noticed the shock in her friend’s face, she looked back too. Then I saw her. She was, of course, Sofia. And the skinny girl was a friend of hers, from work.

           Sofia smiled nervously. I did too. We talked. We agreed to meet again. A dream come true.

           It lasted, like dreams do, one night. Even less. Then she got back to her senses and remembered all the hurt, the pain, the absence, the sense of abandonment or whatever she convinced herself was the reason for leaving me after I came back to the country, ready to live together, get married, perhaps.

           The next day she did what she had done the time before. Breaking up with a silly text message. I knew what was going to happen next. My reasoning, my questioning, my excuses about something I could not really identify. Her adamant refusal.

           I never thought something that never happened would hurt this much.

           I was hoping the concert would help me accept things, no matter what. It didn’t work out that way. Obsessivethinking, uselessthinking, exhaustivethinking. Sometimes I blame her for her inconstancy, her fears, her fragility. Other times I wonder what she saw in me that she couldn’t trust: inconstancy despite my promises, fears despite my assurance, fragility that I cannot see or accept. Maybe she was right in acting the way she did, because if we had reconciled and things had gotten ugly I wouldn’t have been able (I wasn’t with my ex-wives), to end a doomed relationship until it had become devastating, until both sides were really damaged. Maybe Sofia was just sensible enough to end ours before that could happen. Or perhaps the bond was simply and plainly not as strong as we both thought, not real enough to stand a year of distance.

           My explanations about all this vary from time to time, sometimes within the hour, within the minute. All those variants are hurtful. The secret to know which one is the most hurtful is noticing which one is prevailing in my mind at the moment. And I realize I have to move on. And that I’ve got find me a new favorite band. And I have to look for help now that the old ache is here again, now that the back is pain.