Decades

Seeking Peace

Stevie had a lot of trepidation about working with Lindsey again. She was determined to keep this professional. She wanted the recording to be a success, and she also wanted their collaboration and relationship to be a success. Their relationship had always been a fiery one. They were always pounding one another, either in a fight to the death or in bed. They'd not yet found a place of middle ground where a warm, benevolent friendship could happen without all the passion that brings on such wild extremes.

The last several years have been tough. Lindsey blamed his being fired from Fleetwood Mac on Stevie. His heart attack came the next year, and Stevie blamed herself for that. Kristen, his wife, decided to step away from the marriage. For this, Lindsey probably had himself to blame. Stevie had read that they didn't go through with the divorce, but are living apart, do marriage counseling by phone, and get together for dinner once a week.

When things blew up, and Stevie decided she couldn't share a stage with Lindsey anymore, it was devastating for them both. She'd wanted to share a life with him. He took up more of her mental real estate than anything else in her life. She was getting too old and wanted to step off of the Lindsey Buckingham hamster wheel once and for all. The band didn't want to lose either of them, and she offered to leave so Lindsey could stay if they wanted him. Even as she offered, she knew that she was the one they'd want to keep if it was between the two of them. She was the one bringing the money.

Stevie knew that she'd spent too many years, hell, decades, trapped in a battle of love and hate with Lindsey. There was not a time that there wasn't a current running between them. At some point, she needed to practice some self-preservation, and at this age, it felt like now or never. She had to protect herself from having her heart destroyed and having to spend years mending it again.

Though she reached out and told Lindsey to take care of himself after the heart attack, she had kept it fairly impersonal. There were things she wanted to write but didn't. She hoped he could read between the lines. She knew that he texted and sometimes emailed, but to protect her peace, she rarely engaged.

Of course, she felt a lot of guilt and a fair amount of shame. She always said they'd be by each other's side if ever something happened to one of them. Though, when the time came, she realized she'd only played lip service to that idea. She wasn't that strong, it turned out. Though, she knew he assumed she just didn't care that much anymore.

Part of her refrained from being there because it wasn't her place. His family didn't need the "Spectre of Stevie," as it had been described, casting a shadow over this time with him. The trauma they were facing was enough. They didn't need her complicating things one bit more.

But, mostly, the reason she stayed away was self-protection. In her life, she'd been destined to lose him again and again. She knew they always found their way back to each other, but death would be the end of that. If he were actually facing death, she would not allow herself close enough access to him to remind herself of what she'd be missing if he didn't recover. It would destroy her, and her love for him had caused her so much pain throughout her lifetime that she was unwilling to put her heart in that kind of danger again.

He had people who loved him and were watching out for him. So, she figured he wouldn't notice anyway. He'd been pretty awful to her the last few times they were together. Her presence would probably just irritate him anyway. She told herself.

Until recently, when they spoke again, he'd been trying to goad her into a reaction by criticizing her creativity, physicality on stage, and her life choices. What an ass, she'd thought. She wanted to respond by smacking him across his smug face. How dare he?! To say in the press that her problem was that she was still in love with him. That headline is still everywhere and makes her look pathetic. It makes her feel pathetic, just as he intended.

But she knew Lindsey well. She knew that he was trying to draw her out, and she hadn't been willing to give him that satisfaction other than a curt statement to the press. She fully intended to stay away from him for the rest of her life.

However, losing their precious Christine had changed everything. It had been devastating for Stevie. She struggled with a lot of grief. Tom's loss still left her aching for the friendships that had been so incredibly pivotal to her career and her life. She still acutely felt the loss of her parents and had never stopped feeling Robin's absence. Seeing Lindsey at the Fleetwood Mac gathering honoring Christine made her feel the loss of him so acutely. She had spent so much of her life grieving his loss.

She'd endured a lifetime of losses. When she thought of her own mortality, even though she was sure there was life beyond this one, it made her want to get things right with Lindsey in this life. 

Peace. 

She just wanted them to make peace so they could move on.

She suspected they had spent lifetimes locked in this seemingly eternal battle. She'd like to be able to move on to the next life without taking the heartache they'd caused each other along with her. Now is the best chance they'll ever have to make that happen. So, here she is.