HELP ME I HAVE BEEN LOST TO COUNTRY MUSIC

Ok, maybe not completely. . .but it seems everything I pick up, from used books to CD's to movies, is somehow mirroring my life and speaking to me personally. I mean, maybe my brain is just hyper-senstive to this topic of relationships ending, heartbreak, confusion, new beginnings. Maybe on some severely subconscious level, I am finding these things on purpose. Maybe I need to, so that I'll see this from all different angles, and know that I'm not the only one to feel this way. Or maybe it's just sick torture--My brain delights in that. I picked up a Dixie Chicks CD, my last purchase in a decadent, frivilous shopping spree. Just an afterthought really. Who'd have guessed that every single song would mirror a thought, a feeling I had in the short time before now. Look at this:

There Is No Good Reason
I Should Have To Be So Alone
I'm Smothered By This Emptiness
Lord I Wish I Was Made Of Stone
Like A Fool I Lent My Soul To Love
And It Paid Me Back In Change
God Help Me
Am I The Only One Who's Ever Felt This Way?

Hell, check out the whole album, Wide Open Spaces. Ok, don't care how corny any of it sounds. For once, I really truly *get* country. One of my favorites, "There's Your Trouble" mimicks two instances when I was dating someone who was thinking about someone else--I recommend it for it's accuracy and delightful instrumentation. I dedicate it to them, minus the me loving part on the second one (sorry, man).

So today, in my journal of a love junkie, is a decent day. I went and showed my leopard gecko, Skeletor, to my mom's preschool class. Those kids are supremely cute and sweet. But I had some flashes of times when I thought about having kids with Dave, and that sucked. I don't get to dream about that now either. Ok, see, there's one of those mental landmines, just waiting for me to walk over it and feel sweet pain. But it's ok. It's that "Comfortably Numb" sort of hurt. I'm leaving it, slowly. It's a dull sort of pain, that feels more like a tightness, a lump in the chest. It never escapes.