He woke up in a motel in Yuma looking at a cockroach.

He couldn’t remember exactly how he got there but he was pretty sure he didn’t have a truck, anymore. He fumbled on the bedstand under the imperious gaze of the cockroach, finally gripping his keys. Sure enough, the key to the Chevy was gone.

It all started when he didn’t come home from the bar one Friday night to the little garage apartment he’d shared with her since high school.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love her or think she loved him. He knew she did. He’d never doubted it until the moment he realized it was only that love that was holding her to him — that a sensible woman would have dumped his dark, driven, compulsively drunk ass long before.

That realization broke him like a twig.

He was drinking alone at the bar and thinking. And it just hit him and he knew what he had to do. He had to leave.

She would find someone new, someone who would be better for her. And he’d be free to go to hell, which is basically what he felt like he had to do.

It was a win-lose situation, but as long as she was doing most of the winning and he was doing most of the losing, it seemed right.

Today’s acoustic version:

Full version (1998):

previous version [Nov 20]

Sometimes I think about ya
think about, think about
think about the things
I thought I’d do for you

Sometimes I wonder
how you’re doing now
I think about it
but I think it turned out best
when I think it through

I know I let you down
I let you down, I let you down
I let ya down hard
and blamed it all on you

I threw your love away
and I laughed and I laughed
I laughed until I died
and when I came to…

the world — it was dead
and I walked around and I walked around
I walked around the world
but I couldn’t find you

I tore my soul open
it was empty, it was empty
a tunnel into nowhere
and I never got thru

sometimes I think about ya
think about ya, think about ya
think about the world I mighta had with you

(C)1999 TK Major