Sappy Song Blog: Love Me Or Leave Me

Ok Dearies, this is a Song Blog. Press play and then read on.

A couple of nights ago during a movie that I waited two months to be available on my Netflix queue, I was barraged with text messages.

The texts came from a guy I dated over three years ago. I thought myself to be madly in love but it didn't work out, mainly because he kept running into and touching other women that he swore the universe was sending his way. After a years of being continously reshelved I dusted myself off so he could clearly see my expiration date for his crap had well past.

Because of the recent events I’ve been playing and replaying, Nina Simone’s, “Love me or Leave me,” as we both discover the intricacies of that crazy ball of love as it bounces from the lovelorn to the loveless.

Love has a bad way of timing. It’s never a choice decision who you give your heart to. One moment it's just having fun and the next someone’s stealing it away.
I want to ask of my heart, “Do I get to have an opinion, can I have a thought of my own?!”
My biggest gripe is that my ‘someone’s’ don’t seem to be working out.
I’ve come to the point where I’d like to return them.
I’ve still got the receipts - in some instances I never even opened them.
It may be hard to return the others... the bubble wrap was just too tempting.

Why do my products have so many defects? By saying ‘products’ I do mean guys. I hate to objectify but I’m into associations now, so bare with me. I mean come on - just like a product, we see you, we buy you, and then we apply you. Typically like so many others I have purchased before you never work and I can’t take you back because I already used you. So you wind up in my bathroom closet in the corner on the second shelf where all the others go to die.

Three years later on a lazy Saturday afternoon with nothing else to do I’ll decide to clean up a little and go into that closet systematically throwing out everything and wondering why I ever brought them all in the first place. So I can’t help but wonder, is it my love or do my guys have defects?


So Nina and I continue to break down our song of heartache in a way that only those all too familiar with that bastard love can understand…“Love me or leave me and let me be lonely/you won't believe me but I love you only/I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else”

Grandiose sounding, isn’t it? I imagine that Nina herself was hopelessly lovesick singing in some smoky, dim lighted club. In an elegant dress she moved about the stage, floating her woes out to the crowd on her gossamer wings of a voice - evoking emotional nods of the head, thoughtful tapping of fingers on the tables. She’d look like she meant every word of this song. She sang it for everyone suffering through these great catastrophes of the heart…“you might find the night time the right time for kissing/night time is my time for just reminiscing/regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else…”

But I’ve come up with a theory to Nina’s, and mine, and yours; in love we sometimes make stupid mistakes at the urging of our hearts, but we are hard pressed to regret them. Our hearts know that in order for it to be happy now - at this moment, it must hold tight to its sanity. It must believe that the love we received was well worth the pain it caused in the end.
How else would we keep getting people to sing tragic yet beautiful love lost songs that we drown ourselves in…“there'll be no one unless that someone is you/ I intended to be independently blue” .

When Nina sings I can feel myself drowning in the reminder of that feeling when there's misery inside your love, and I love knowing that somewhere someone else is listning to this and knows the same ache.

Now maybe Nina doesn’t do it for you; I’m just sharing my song - the one that makes me wail.
While I go on strutting down the streets of Philly looking for, Mister Right, I’m going to feel a little better knowing that even if the next one fails I’m going to keep trying until I do succeed. Because heck, even if he isn't reliable I'll always have Nina.