I climbed out of bed this morning after reading another chapter of Love Medicine, and I turned the song on not thinking much about it. That's when it hit me. Almost seven months later, the line in the song means something else. New people. New faces. New feelings. It's the strangest part of life. It's the part of life where we awake to find a new day, even when all the dark nights had tried to overpower the light.

She contacted me late in the evening on Friday. Even though I'd seen her in person somewhere around July or August of this year, we still hadn't spoken much in many, many months. I wrote earlier Friday that I thought perhaps I would yak it up with some friends this weekend. I didn't know at the time that it would be her. I also didn't understand until six hours had passed exactly how much I could miss a person somehow deep inside where I wouldn't even admit it to yourself. People pass in and out of my life so much. I still wish it wasn't this way, but when these people return, reunions can be sweet.

When we called it quits around four A.M., there was a sense of absence again. For a few hours though, I forgot about previous people and previous feelings. It was a welcome relief. An overwhelming sense of emptiness has swallowed me these days, and I can't seem to climb out for very long. Working through feelings in my head gets more tiring than an eighteen hour day. Right now I'm just looking for a little balance to even out my existence. A way to forget the things I know I cannot feel.