My post today is about a song that many probably have not heard of. It’s titled “Leaving Me Now” and it is by the band Level 42. Most people are probably familiar with Level 42’s bigger hit “Something About You”. “Leaving Me Now” is on the same album. This song is special to me because it took on special significance for me after an engagement ended in January 1986. I got engaged right out of high school to a guy who (I realize now) wanted nothing to do with marrying me or being with me since he had himself someone else. I moved from my home in Illinois to be with him and got to school in Philadelphia. By the time my first semester in college ended, so had my engagement. I had been with this guy for 5 years and he was my first love, so I took the breakup pretty hard. Adding to the stress and sadness was that I needed to uproot my life again, leave my new friends and college, and go back home to Illinois. Sometimes I look back at that time and I am so grateful that I had that breakup then instead of now. There was no social media, so the only way I could learn anything going on in his life with his new woman was if we talked on the phone or we exchanged letters. I tried to contact him plenty, but obviously he wasn’t interested.

Music plays a huge role in my life. I attach songs to so many significant moments and memories. This song was one I listened to over and over again after we broke up. It’s a song about the end of a relationship, and there were lines that just seem to echo my sentiments at that time: “Seems all I’ve known is deceit”, “I’d still die for you gladly”, “Not even love could bring you to stay”, “There’s no more love, only feelings of doubt”. The melancholy in the song was just what I needed to drown in my feelings of sadness and pain. I would listen to this song so many times a day, and slowly, over time, I would listen less and less and I would feel a little less pain. Now I can listen to the song and appreciate the beautiful way heartache is expressed and I can conjure up memories of how crushed I was at that time. But I don;t need the song to help me work through anything anymore, but it remains a favorite because it enabled me to go on with living and loving.