Today’s BT’s birthday, a day that — for three years running now — causes me mild uncertainty about what to do (if anything). Three years ago, I was told in no uncertain terms that his friends had demanded the day, that he had no time for me. (Later, I found out “his friends” = BBBS Megan, who took him rafting in Chattanooga for the day, becaue she called herself his girlfriend… but whatev. Water under the bridge.) Last year, I think I probably sent an email or something, carefully treading the line between honoring what the friendship had been while not encouraging a renewal of said friendship. I had sort of assumed I’d end up sending him a card this August, but what with everything else swirling in my orbit, I just never did.
I almost never listen to it anymore, because it conjures up a strong memory of sitting on the cold, white-tiled floor of the largest hotel shower I’ve ever seen, writing well past midnight about the cold, hard reality that Brant was never, ever going to love me the way I needed to be loved… but this morning, in perhaps the most understated tribute to the day of his birth imaginable, I queued up “A Beautiful Mistake” on the ol’ iPod. Sitting at the Levitt shell, listening to this song on a warm September night, was a pivotal point in the Brant-Liz experience. It had always been a powerful song for me, long before Brant came sweeping into my world, but that night, we took away different things.
Here’s what I hear — a promise that the person I’d searched for for so long WAS out there, and that even though I didn’t know his name, I WOULD find him, and make the ‘beautiful mistake’ of falling in love with him. “Plastic phones and plastic faces haunting all the usual places. In a crowd, I’m still apart, the only one with a beating heart, with the tears and stains to make it real. You and I, we are the same… faded pictures in a broken frame. And I don’t even know your name. But when I close my eyes, it’s only you I’m thinking of.”
Brant? He heard that your love (well, his love) is never enough, that his defenses were keeping him from being *able* to fall in love. He was tormented by the fear that he’d never again be able to trust someone else enough to truly love again. “A heart that will not break? It’s not enough. It’s not enough. What a beautiful mistake, to fall in love.”
It struck me then, as it strikes me now, that a song I love so much, an anthem to my optimism, could’ve caused such deep turmoil in another. That night, in the wake of a powerful Guy Forsyth show (as they ALL are), the course of events changed; I abandoned my hopes vis-a-vis Brant, and instead resolved (with good success) to let it be what it would be. It felt like a very brave decision at the time, to abandon hope in favor of the unknown. And I now know that doing so opened up the space to heal, to demand more for myself, and to find my then-unknown and unnamed love.
So, happy birthday, Brant. You gave me much, including the ability to selfishly demand more than you could give me. If that’s your lasting legacy? I’d say it was all worth it.