I wrote this song based on a real experience I had.
This story came back to me today, and I wanted to share it because I’ve always felt that one of the most sacred parts of being human is meeting people in their most vulnerable moments and making them feel safe enough to be seen there. I collect human experiences. I pay attention to them. And I really do believe that this kind of connection, the kind that makes another person feel less alone for even a moment, is part of how we save the world.
A long time ago, I was at a local bar and ended up sitting next to a man who was there alone, having a drink. We started talking, and I learned he was in town from Texas on a business trip, so he was far from home. We were very different people in a lot of ways, but that was what made the conversation so interesting. We didn’t need to be the same to connect. We were just two strangers sharing our perspectives, listening to each other, and letting the conversation go where it wanted to go.
At some point, he told me that I looked just like a childhood friend of his. He said it was the way I smiled, the way I laughed, even the way I talked. He showed me a picture of her, and honestly, he was right. We really did look strikingly similar. Then he started showing me more pictures, telling me little things about her, and I remember thinking to myself, “Oh. He loves her.” I just smiled and kept asking him questions about her, and he answered every one of them so easily, like he had been carrying her around in his heart for a very long time.
By then, he had been buying me drinks along with his own, and little by little we were both getting more intoxicated. As the night went on, more of the story started to come out. It turned out I was right. He did love her. He always had. But he never told her. Eventually life pulled them in different directions. They married other people. Time kept moving. But even after all of that, he still carried that love for her. She was the one that got away. Then he told me she had died in a car accident only a few weeks earlier.
My heart dropped.
This big, burly man from Texas, wearing a black cowboy hat, completely fell apart in front of me. He started crying, telling me how much he missed her and how badly he wished he had told her the truth, how much he had loved her all along. So I just held him while he cried. And because I looked like the woman he had loved, because something in me reminded him of her, he said goodbye to her through me.
He left not long after that, but I still think about him sometimes. I wish I could remember his name. This happened a long time ago now, and I truly hope he’s doing well. That experience stayed with me so deeply that I wrote a song about it. I’ve never released it.
But maybe I should.