Icarus and Billy Joel

"So I would choose to be with you, as if the choice were mine to make...
But you can make decisions, too, and you can have this heart to break."

That song makes me so, so sad every time I hear it.

Earlier today I was contemplating Icarus in relation to dating. I knew that Icarus had wings, and that he flew too close to the sun. I misremembered the story -- I thought they got burnt into little stubbly nubs and he had to be earth-bound his whole life and long to feel the breeze under his wings, but no. He didn't have to live the pain and sorrow and longing that I attributed to him.

The real story actually makes more physics sense--the wings were made of feathers and wax, and, because he thought he was all that plus a bag of chips, he ignored the manual, which specifically stated that you shouldn't fly too close to the water or the wax will get soggy, and you shouldn't fly too close to the sun because the wax will melt. Icarus thought he was above the rulebook, which is why he ignored it and, when the wax melted, he went tumbling, perhaps as many as a few thousand feet into the ocean and died.

I was thinking about Icarus because a ridiculous number of my closest friends have recently gotten out of relationships. In a couple cases, they were the ones who ended it -- in a few, it was the other way around.

It seems that with dating, everyone has an Icarus story.  When you're just starting to date someone you're excited about, it's hard not to assume that gravity will win...Every. Single. Time.  But then things seem to be going really well, and -- it's not usually the case that my fellow single fliers get cocky, like Icarus -- it's that we start to hope too much, thinking that this time will not be like all the others. Surely! An investment is made. It starts generating interest. The interest compounds, the interest is reinvested -- and voila. Recipe for disaster and heartbreak has been written. Already the wax is beginning to soften. Softening isn't bad, if the wings are being reshaped to be more aerodynamically efficient when they cool.

Sometimes, especially lately, it seems that as all Icarus daters fly along in their relationships, one of three things happens:

Option one, the one that doesn't really seem like a possibility for anybody on the ground, is to manage to make the up and down work, strengthening themselves and working together to dip and dive and soar and all those lovely-sounding things.

Option two is to do as Icarus did, not obey the rule book. The result is to tumble down, down, down, no parachute in sight, not doing a single thing slow the fall or look out for a safe landing. Splat. Failed love -- no more trying. This is very uncommon -- the least popular choice, I would say, as human beings are generally creatures of hope.

Option three, the one that seems to happen the most often to people in my life right now, is that the sun decides to dip down and singe the little relationship wings that were growing past all repair. The damage is done, and it seems like, instead of the fate of tumbling a fair distance and have the risk of essentially splatting, the wings are singed, and somehow the flier makes it back to safe ground, with a bit of a bumpy landing, and for their trouble they receive the option of being doomed to wander about with the burnt stubbly nubs I mentioned earlier, longing for the loft of a relationship. Eventually, after a good long bit of running back and forth madly in a futile effort to generate enough land speed to become airborne without wings, and perhaps much despair and fist-shaking at the sky, when acceptance comes, bit by bit, feathers come back, until one day a hop is taken, then a bound, and then a downright leap off the precipice is taken. Again. I know I'm mixing Greek stories and maybe even metaphors here, but come on, that Pandora's box of hope is a pesky, real thing.

The thing is, with option three, sometimes each person is Icarus in the relationship, and sometimes the sun. And sometimes, after the sun has just singed wings, all that's left is to sing Billy Joel and realize that each person can make decisions, and sometimes, that means hearts break.

Hugs to all those Icarii out there with singed, stubby wings. Sometimes it's a false alarm and it's just a few burnt feathers and you'll really make option 1 work -- it was just a scare. If not, I will wrap my arms around you, cry with you, and maybe together our tears will heal the little stubbly nubs and someday you can go flying again and find a beautiful partner, and option one WILL happen. It doesn't make it any easier now to hear that. I know, all too well. But keep a tight hold onto that pesky Pandora's box, and, with some luck and a lack of hubris and bitterness, you might just leave behind your Icarus days forever.