I loved that song as a child. I mean, I fucking LOVED IT! I used to get dressed up in my mom’s nightgowns and grab a hairbrush and then jump up on the hassock in the living room, and belt it out. Daily. I am sure I was adorable/funny. I can’t imagine what my parents thought when I would launch myself into several renditions of Delta Dawn. But I know for a period of time this was likely an almost daily endeavor.
But why that song? Why the nightgowns? I mean, the hairbrush is a no brainer.
I think Helen Reddy just spoke to me, even as a child, even at 4. I think I heard the anthem of womanhood and it resonated even before I was capable of knowing what the fuck that even was.
Delta Dawn is about a beautiful woman who ruins herself on a man. Jeez, I can’t relate to that at all! Ms. Dawn falls in love with the wrong man and when he leaves her standing at the altar, she loses her mind and never really gets it back. I heard it the other day and had a new 21st century recognition, Delta was probably homeless and walking around Brownsville, suitcase (it would be a shopping cart today) seeking to find that which she lost. Alcohol was probably involved.
I can relate Delta. I have wrecked myself on the shores of men for a long time. Allowing their selection of me to be the thing, one of the only things, that gave me meaning and vitality and purpose. I am grateful I didn’t end up like her. But I know, all too well, I could have. That pesky and unrepentant character defect of pride saved my ass one more time.
I was always too proud. I mean, I totally fucked myself up over men and their misdeeds. Totally. Repeatedly. But rarely did they know the extent to which I was drinking at them or over them or because of them. Pride kept my very delicate and fragile ego in tact, so that I could destroy myself in relative peace and the safety of anonymity.
And I am grateful for my overabundance of pride, it has saved me more times than I can count. But it was never capable of keeping me out of the fray to begin with...
No, pride will always goeth before the fall, fuck, I know, I have fallen a fucking lot!
My last entanglement (we might as well call it what it was) didn’t level me like Delta Dawn but it did take me to places where I really would have liked to have missed. I can see now that it was never love I felt, it was just a trauma bond. One that I was recreating with every man I ever met over and over again, culminating into that last fucking debacle which totally rearranged me, hopefully for good.
As I think back now, I am sure that I didn’t see it coming. I was just doing the same thing I always did - seeing some stupid ass guy with all his “potential” and allowing myself to be wasted on him, for him and because of him. Except it was never really that way. It was always because of me. And I fucking know that now.
And so too was the fate of the beautiful Delta Dawn. The mysterious, dark haired man of her dreams was likely just a narcissist too sick and loathsome to ever really attract someone like Ms. Dawn. But some broken part in her believed to her own detriment and core that she deserved a man like him. And I know, from painful experience after painful experience, that the narcissists always are bright and shiny and easy to fall into...because they are the ones right there telling you how amazing and wonderful you are in ways that you desperately need to hear.
In Delta’s case it was too late. Him leaving her was her undoing and the rest of her life was spent wandering around, trying to undo the trauma in which he was not the cause but a symptom. I know every bad dating and “love” decision I have ever made was because of my own wounds. It was because I was fucked up and so a man like that was attractive to me because of me, not him. I felt I deserved no better, so I got exactly what I allowed into my life.
I have thought and acted as though men were at fault for a lot of shit in my life. I have wasted large amounts of time, money, sex, love and grace on men that didn’t deserve the time of day from me. And I blamed them for my conduct for a really long time. But I am the fucker who always picked them or allowed them to pick me.
I am not that person anymore. I am not sure exactly how this miraculous change has occurred in my life, but I no longer entertain the company of dastardly deed doing men. I have, finally, and blessedly, risen above the results of my own trauma.
The view from here is fucking amazing. My life, right now, not at some future point that may never come to fruition, but right here, right now, my life is fucking amazing. There are no men upon which I am wasting myself. Dating is light and fun and on my terms. I feel completely at peace and ease with their very limited place in my life. So much so that I might stop allowing them access all together...
I didn’t know that Delta Dawn would be predictive or prophetic for me. I am grateful that I don’t wander around town, suitcase in tow, pining away for some man that was never good enough for me to begin with...I am fucking grateful. It totally could’ve cut differently.
I am not sure why most of my most painful but amazing lessons in this life have been at the hands of men like Mr. Dark Haired Fucker, but I too have wasted a great deal of time, beauty, money and self upon men like that. I get you Delta, I fucking get you.
So while I may have walked the same path, I am grateful for the different ultimate destination. I still have most of my faculties intact. I am not crazy (well, for the most part). I am relatively sane and living my best life, without a man. And I will tell you that every day that goes by without one sleeping next to me makes it more and more likely that that position in my bed may be permanently reserved for a cat.
I pray that I am all done with men of low degree. I pray that my fate is to never meander through this life with some faded ass rose from a man that was never really there to begin with. I pray that I now know better what made me susceptible to men like that. And I pray that I may one day allow a better, more evolved man in. I do believe intimacy and connection are my work in this life. So I will keep trying but I am doing it on my terms, on my timeline and in my own way. And I can promise you, an alter is the very last thing I am hoping for on my path through this life.
Been there, done that. Not really sure I ever want that again...still.
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