Some Day I'll Pay the Bills With This Guitar

There are songs that, when I hear them on the radio (or walking through the grocery store, when no one else seems to hear them in the background), take my heart from my chest and dissect it, piece by piece until I can see the pieces in front of me like they've just been dumped from a shredder. Sometimes it physically hurts me and I can feel the tears form a huge puddle under my eyes, and the puddle wants to become an ocean, and my whole body shudders and convulses while I'm driving, and I hide my face with my hair and hope with all my being that my husband doesn't hear me because I know he'll never understand.

Hey There Delilah is one of those songs. Most people have heard this song, but if you haven't and you'd like to, here it is. This post might not make as much sense as it should, if you don't listen to it and you have never heard it.


In the midst of an awful argument that escalated way further than it should have, I sat behind the wheel of my car and attempted to grasp at the normalcy of a trip to the grocery store. This song came on the radio and I felt the separation spread between us. We were sitting right next to each other in the same car that we always took, and yet we were so far away... I felt like I couldn't have reached him with all the planes and the ships this world had to offer.

I remember thinking when this song first came out and when I realized how much my husband loved it, that I hoped with everything I had that it reminded him of us. Even if the words had nothing to do with our circumstances, the feeling behind the song has always reminded me of him. But then, every song reminds me of him. It's the music behind the words that bring him to me. I know that no matter what happens to us he will always be there; he's behind every note, every chord, every strum of every guitar and every melody that's ever made me feel anything beyond the pale. He's my music, and that's how I know that the love I have for him is more than what people see on the surface. Anyone that knows me knows that I live my life through music, it's my saving grace... it keeps me breathing. That's why, no matter how bad financial situations have gotten, I have always kept that ONE guitar, so I can keep my sanity. I sold almost all of them but I'll never sell them all. My husband is in my music; floating behind the vibrations created by strings and perfectly constructed wood.

As we drove in a thick silence that coated us like some disgusting exhaust slime, I listened to this song and wondered if Delilah and the person who wrote this song ever scream at each other. Do they call each other names and say hurtful things to one another? Does he throw spatulas at the door as she's closing it on his yelling? Does Delilah ever call this guy a lying sack of shit or go running through her neighborhood so fast and so hard that she almost throws up? Does she run so fast and far because she thinks that maybe, by some magical force that's beyond her she can shed their problems through her sweating pores? Does she lay next to him in bed and quietly resent his ability to sleep peacefully even though things seem like they're teetering on the edge of destruction?

Is it really LOVE if it doesn't occasionally rip your heart right out of your chest and make you absolutely fucking insane?

The verse that really hurts is: "A thousand miles seems pretty far but they've got planes and trains and cars, I'd walk to you if I had no other way."

I would walk to him if I had no other way... but he was sitting right next to me, and how do you explain a distance that big, when someone is so close?