The news of Gerry Rafferty’s death felt like a personal loss. Rafferty was the poet whose song “Baker Street” epitomizes hopium addiction*, and the broken dreams of an abusive relationship.
“Baker Street” was the soundtrack of my hopeless marriage. Gerry Rafferty, in case you don’t know the name, was a singer-songwriter who co-founded Stealer’s Wheel, and went on to write “Baker St”. If you haven’t heard “Baker Street” you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWJOUiKvRk&feature=fvst
I spent a few of those years before ‘I’d be happy’ - quite literally - walking down Baker St to see my beloved psychotherapist, with Rafferty’s song reverberating in my head. Jack knew my marriage was doomed. Still, he couldn’t explain why it was doomed, because emotional abuse wasn’t on his map of the world. So, he couldn’t help me break free of it.
Jack managed to convey his belief that I was a valuable human being, but he was not able to teach me to love myself. He couldn’t understand how an emotionally abuse relationship undermines a person.
The lines that reverberated in my head through those years were these:
“You used to think that it was so easy,
You used to say that it was so easy
But you’re tryin’, you’re tryin’ now.
Another year and then you’d be happy
Just one more year and then you’d be happy
But you’re cryin’, you’re cryin’ now.”
I invested a lot of ‘one more years’ waiting to arrive at the tipping point of happiness, believing, against all odds, that the investment would one day come good.
It never happened. Those years were an emotional desert.
Rafferty had a violent, heavy drinking father, and a mother who “stayed in the relationship for her son”. Small wonder “Baker Street” conveys all the misery of an abusive relationship so poignantly.
Small wonder, too, perhaps, that this creative, intelligent man drank himself to death.
That one more year and then he’d be happy never came, for him.
How much longer can you wait for it to come around for you?
If you’re pinning your last hopes on somebody undergoing a transformation to make that dream of happiness come true, then you’ll be crying now…
Or, worse still, you may be numb.
If you’ve had enough of “One More Year…” and you’d rather be happy NOW, let me help you. My 17 week course, starting February 7th is probably the most comprehensive course available – anywhere - to help you find the courage, the faith, and the self-love to walk away from a situation that is bleeding you dry.
Find out more here.
If you feel you’ve waited too long for happiness already, sign up now.
You DON’T have to live your life on Baker Street.
* hopium addiction – the groundless hope that a toxic relationship will one day change for the better, just because you want it to.
Recent Comments