David Senra

With the end of each affair, I'd feel a sad relief from the suffocating claustrophobia love had brought me.

And I'd be free.

I'd switch partners, hit rewind and take it from the top, telling myself this time it'll be different.

Then it would be high times and laughs until fate and that unbearable anxiety came knocking and it'd be one more for the road.

And in the very next paragraph, he goes back to this hold that his traumatic childhood has on him as a grown man, as a rock star, a world famous musician.

This is what he's doing.

goes back to the little town, Freehold, New Jersey, where he grew up.

I still spent many hours on the edges of my birth city.

He's in the car again.

Mine was a pathetic and quasi-religious compulsion.

On my visits to my hometown, I would never leave the confines of my car.

My car was the sealed time capsule from whose seats I could experience the little town that had its crushing boot on my neck.

I'd roll through its streets listening for the voices of my father, my mother, and me as a child.

I would daydream of purchasing a house, moving back away from all the noise that I'd created, bringing it all full circle, fixing things, finding a love, one that would last, marrying and walking through town.

My children in my arms, my woman at my side.

It was a pleasant fantasy, and I suppose I took comfort in the illusion that I could go back.

but have been around long enough to know history is sealed and unchangeable.

You can move on with a heart stronger in the places it's been broken.

Create new love.

You can hammer pain and trauma into a righteous sword and use it in defense of life, love, human grace, and God's blessing.