NOTE: This was originally written on Friday the 17th of November, I just forgot to post it.

Back in the day–when a select few colleagues and I worked for a semi-large fluid power distributor, halfway between York, PA and Royersford, PA (and no one lived anyplace else)–our in-office, Friday tradition was to listen to Power Ballads from the 1980s and 1990s for as long as we could before our boss, or someone else in the office ordered us to turn them off. We usually made it until around lunchtime before our radio station (yes, we used to listen to the radio back then) was silenced. I remember those days fondly, even now–as I sit here in my home office on an unusually mild, November day less than a week away from Thanksgiving in the Year 2023 of our Lord–so much so that every so often, I have my own, Power Ballad Friday whilst I go about my week ending business, and pray that someone doesn’t hit me with a rush pre-5PM EST. So far, so good today. Fingers crossed that it remains so. It’s been a long week.

For those of you reading this that do not know what a Power Ballad is, I offer you this definition, courtesy of Bing and the interwebs: “A Power Ballad is a slow love song that is sung with a lot of emotion and grows bigger, louder and more fervent on the way to [it’s] impassioned finale. Power Ballads are a mainstay of popular music since the 1970s and combine the euphoric uplift created by rousing music with sentimental themes and ploys. Power Ballads often sing of an emotional Valhalla where everything has to be forever.”

Okay so maybe that last part was unnecessary, but any reference to “Valhalla” is a good reference in my opinion, so I included it. The key part of the definition is the first sentence, and while I understand that technically, the Power Ballad (abbreviated PB moving forward to save time and space) has been around since the 1970s, it wasn’t truly perfected in my humble opinion until the 1980s with the rise of bands like Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, Cinderella, Whitesnake et al. I could go on and on–there were more bands releasing PBs in the 1980s and 1990s than there were Motown bands releasing hits in the 1960s and 1970s–and guess what friends? Every one of them was a hit. And every person that grew up and listened to PBs then has their own Top 10 list, me included. While I’d love to share that list herein, I’m worried that doing so would eat up too much time and space and keep me away from the whole point of this little piece of Mental Flatulence. Which is? I am glad you asked.

Full transparency: Power Ballad Friday (shortened to PBF moving forward in the interest of yadda, yadda yadda) was only a gateway to retrospective. I was listening to PBs long before the call I had this morning with one of my prospective market makers (what we call staffing companies in my staffing-adjacent business, abbreviated to MM moving forward). I get to speak with a lot of folks on a daily basis in my line of work. I also get to leave a ton of voicemails and send a ton of emails and LinkedIn messages, but I prefer the conversations. While I tend to keep my written correspondences diverse and targeted, I find that the conversations I have with folks speak more to my strengths. Back in the day–long before we all lived between York and what we endearingly called ROFO and listened to PBs all morning every PBF–there was limited email and no LinkedIn. We couldn’t even text one another which I am quite sure comes as a shock to the same segment of people, reading this that had no idea what a Power Ballad was and think Cinderella is a Disney princess, a deaf leopard is a big cat that can’t hear, and a motley crew is a… Well? A motley crew. We communicated in two ways: Via snail mail (that would be the USPS for those of you who are uninitiated and too young to remember when stamps actually had a monetary value and weren’t just “forever stamps”) and most commonly, via phone.

Ah, ye’ ol’ phone call. I had dozens, maybe hundreds of epic phone conversations back in the day. They weren’t just “hi! How are you” calls either. We’re talking two-to-three-hour marathon sessions which oftentimes happened after dark and occasionally resulted in one, or both parties passing out with the call still connected. And oh, my friends and loved ones, I am here to tell you that there is nothing cooler than waking up in the middle of the night with the phone still by your ear and hearing the sound of a friend or a girl/boyfriend you truly care for sleeping on the other end. You wake them up with a soft recitation of their name, only to hear a low sigh, and a breathy voice speak your name before saying, “I must have fallen asleep.” You can see the soft smile upon their face despite the fact that it is only their voice you are hearing. That was trust, guys and gals. Attachment. And more often than not? Love. At least it was for me… More often than not.

I digress. This morning, I had a call with a prospective MM that I have been speaking with for a few months now–what we in the Business Development (abbreviated as BD for short) world call a “slow burner.” The upshot? He was being forced to put a move forward on hold indefinitely due to… Wait for it… The divorce he was going through with his soon-to-be ex-wife. She was the co-owner of his recently dissolved company, and everything related to it and his future business dealings were and are to remain frozen until sorted through. This knowledge led to genuine sympathy on my end, and a deeper conversation about relationships and, more accurately, separation and divorce. Shockingly enough, his situation was, and is very similar to the situation I found myself in over five years ago now. I won’t get too heady on the specifics as that would be a disservice to him, his soon-to-be ex, myself and my own ex whom I truly consider both a co-parent and a friend. For me, what is passed is Past, but for him, what is in my Past is his Present. I told him this, and his response?

“How did you get through it?”

Anyone who has been through a divorce has, at some point been asked this question by someone else who is going through a separation and a divorce. Hell, I’ve asked it of people in the past, and the responses I received from them were as different as “Something To Believe In” by Poison is from “Hysteria” by Def Leppard. For all the Gen Z’ers reading this that are still grappling with what a PB is and why a band would name themselves Guns N Roses, those are two of my favorite PBs and for educational purposes, I am linking them both herein so that you can see what I mean and maybe, just maybe experience the majesty and awesomeness of a PB for the first time.

Rad, huh? Totally tubular. In 2023 terms? Lit. I’d love to hear your thoughts so hit me up in the comments section if you’d like or just… You know, forget I ever introduced you to these and go back to listening to Olivia Rodrigo. I won’t judge you. I’ve got two teenage girls and believe it or not, I think Olivia slays.

Anywhos, back to the question I cited above. How did I get through it? How did I, an uber emotional, hopeful romantic survive losing the woman I once vowed to spend the rest of my life with? How did I go from the guy, celebrating the anniversary of his last, first date to the guy writing these words today a shade over six years later? Unaware of how I was going to answer my colleague’s question, I started talking, as I oftentimes do, and have done for as long as I can remember dating back to those nights on the phone with my friends and girlfriends until one or both of us fell asleep without disconnecting the call. Many times, in the past, I’ve started speaking and have quickly forgotten what I said, but today, I realized quite quickly that the words coming out of my mouth were and remain the greatest lesson I have learned from my own, personal experience in the last five plus years, and I should remember them. While I won’t list them verbatim, I feel comfortable paraphrasing them herein.

It’s never easy. Regardless of how amicable the split is, voluntarily walking away from something you committed heart, mind and soul to x-amount of years before is hard. Damaging. You will carry the scars of it with you for the remainder of your life, regardless of how long that life is, where you go, if you love again et cetera et cetera. You will wake up at night in a cold sweat occasionally from a nightmare, and you’ll promptly look to your left or right for the person that you’d snuggle with in the past to ward off the fear. They will not be there. You’ll go somewhere during the day and remember the time you and she/he were there together, what you did, even what you ate and what you talked about and if you’re like me, you’ll even recall what they were wearing. Yet they will not be there. You will find yourself in a place where you are looking for “something to believe in” and you’ll wish that you “didn’t know now the things you did know then.” You may even “get hysterical, hysteria.”

The key, in these moments is to not give into despair. When you’re struggling to pay your bills and you wish you had a second income to contribute, don’t grow withdrawn and depressed. Embrace the challenge of learning how to do it on your own and draw strength from it. You’ll have moments where life blindsides you–as it did me a few weeks ago when I had to buy a new car with little to no warning–but that’s not because you’re on your own. It’s not God or whatever deity you believe testing your resolve or paying you back for the bad stuff you did before. It’s just the nature of Life with a capital L. As time passes, these moments will begin to pass too. They may never entirely go away, but through perseverance… Through not giving up, you will develop into something you never thought you would when your relationship took a hard left turn into Sh*tsville. An individual. You, but a new version of you. You 2.0. And you’ll realize, eventually that you are in a better place than you were before. You’ll move on with your life into the “magical mysteria” that is your new future. End paraphrase.

The result of this was a decision to speak again pre-the end of the year, and an offer extended by me to speak with my prospective MM again in the future if needed, whether said conversation is work-related, or other. We hung up, and I went about my day which, eventually, found me writing these words on my lunch break. I realize–as I read back over what I just composed–that somehow, against at times overwhelming odds I moved on. It didn’t take me five plus years–this started some time ago–but I’ve not yet been able to fully explicate the feeling, and my current state like I did today and am doing now. As for how I feel, I’ll be honest with y’all: Not much different than I did when I woke up this morning. I think that too is a sign that this has been a gradual process of emotional evolution as there is no watershed moment that I can point to where the light just “clicked” on, and I knew I was okay. But I am okay. And given the conversation I had with my colleague earlier… Given the moment when the punk truly became the godfather and spoke to someone facing the same, uncertain future that I did back in 2018, I am grateful… Beyond thankful to those who saw me through those early days, post-separation and pre-divorce when I admittedly ran low on the strength to continue, and they shared theirs with me. It would take me too long to list them all here but if they are reading these words right now (and I’m pretty sure that more than a handful of them are)? Booyakasha. Respect. Yoda once told Luke Skywalker (Star Wars, guys; even Gen-Z knows Star Wars, right?) in “Return of the Jedi” and again in “The Last Jedi” to pass on what he had learned. I guess that really is the way of not just the Force, but Life with a capital L. Lesson learned and passed on guys and gals.

I think that’s a good place to close this little blog entry/piece of Mental Flatulence out. My mind grows weary, and my lunch break is just about over. I feel like I should have written more about PBs and PBF, as well as MMs, BD et cetera. but as I mentioned earlier, those abbreviated topics acted as a gateway to what I really needed to write about, and in that, I have achieved my goal. Fitting that the last PB I’m listening to as I conclude is “Heaven” by Warrant. No, I didn’t plan that, it just happened. Why? Well, give it a listen. You tell me.

Happy Power Ballad Friday friends and oftentimes casual readers. Winky emoticon. Smiley face.

F.