Having the blues

I don’t know if things are affecting me more these days, or is it that I am getting old, or the fact that my last trip to Argentina was full of reunions of different types, but I have noticed my feelings to be a lot more raw in these last few days. They are not raw in the untreatable sense, but more in the melancholic side.
Things as irrelevant as the death of a musician that I met on a flight, but had left her influence in other ways, primarily through her music touched a nerve, and brought tears to my ears the first few hours after hearing of her death. I have always been what my wife would call a masochist. I’ve always thought of myself as a sensitive person. Music has always played a big role in my life since my early high school days, and even though I’ve never played an instrument, it has always been a factor for highs and lows. And these can come in many different ways, through Karen Carpenter singing “A Song for you” as an example, or The Beatles, Indian music, etc.
But because I have a different schedule than the rest of my family I listen to lots of music when I am alone. I also listen to music while I’m driving. My wife, there she goes again, would say that I am stuck in the ‘70s. There is some truth in that. I guess it’s because I grew up with it, and many times it has a special meaning for me, it represents a different time in my life.
I don’t complain about the time that I am living now, it is all I have, but looking back there is no doubt that those were easier days, primarily because we were irresponsible, we were invulnerable. I am thankful for those days, although I don’t long for them. I am conscious that the now is what I have, and I try to make the best of it.
But because every year once I get back from my home town, I go through a period that I would call bleeding, and I didn’t do it this year, I guess I am going through a little bit of the blues now. This year I thought I’m not going to allow this to happen. But sooner or later it had to catch up with me. I guess it will be over in a few days; in the meantime I will try to keep my mind busy with other things, like I always try to do.
I admit that many times I look around in the area where I live, and falling trap to stereotyping, which is funny because I hate it, I think that people are cold, to the extreme of insensitivity. I wonder if that is just a mask to hide their feelings and their vulnerability. And this is not only true with strangers, but with people that I have known for a longer time, some of them since I have moved to this area. In many instances, although I have known for almost 25 years, I still don’t feel that I know them completely.
I was talking to a former schoolmate yesterday, a person that I saw at the reunion we had this year in Argentina, and that before that I had not seen or spoken to in 34 years, and when I talk to her it’s like talking to somebody that I have never stopped talking to or seeing. I wonder why that is the case.
And I also think if it is my Latin upbringing, not because I am of Latin descent as I am a Celt and a Saxon, but I feel that there is more of a sense of warmness, more of a sense of friendship in the real meaning. I have a good friend whom I say that he is like my adopted parent, as he is my mother’s age, and also because my parents live 5000 miles away, unfortunately I helped him sell his house. During the whole process I had mixed feelings, on a one hand it is what I do for a living, but on the other my feelings were getting in the way, because I knew that he was moving away. Although he is not across the globe I don’t have the luxury of just driving a few minutes and having a round of discussion, healthy and enriching, at least in my case, like we used to. This has not helped either with my blues. Time is a great heeler, and with God’s help everything is possible.