Liz Phair "Jealousy"

"I know it's just a drawer of photographs. They're ex-girlfriends, I try to remember that."

When I young, 8th grade maybe, I remember my Dad telling me about one of his players. Dad coached high school baseball, and his star player had just quit the team, because the kid been dumped by his girlfriend. And the kid had gone into such a deep state of depression that he had stopped coming to practice or going to classes or talking to people. He was holed up at home, and the coaches were asked by the kid's folks, to come talk to him.

Dad said something to me, that he’d tried to relate to the player, that I've always held on to. "It's not always going to be like this."

No matter how you feel right now, no matter how much it hurts today, things will evolve and the state that your in will pass.

When I first moved in with my now wife, we had an issue. I had this file cabinet full of letters and journals. For about half of the 90s, I had written a daily journal, and sent and received letters regularly, and I saved every scrap. And the thought of a drawer full of ex-girlfriends, sitting right there in our one bedroom apartment, really freaked out my wife. So much so, that I moved the file cabinet over to my parents' basement for a while.

I forgot that "it's not always going to be like this."

Today, five years later, we sat at our computer, on Facebook, and looked up pictures of Ex's, and I didn't flinch, didn't think twice about it, until tonight when I hit random on the iTunes and Liz Phair came up. Our relationship to our past is different now.

But that file cabinet is still staying in the garage.

Hear Liz Phair "Jealousy"