| Current mood: | Hurt |
| Current music: | Don't Hate Me // The Get Up Kids |
Forgive me
It's a strange feeling to have your loyalties questioned. It's also a strange thing to be put into a position where the obvious right answer feels so wrong and the wrong answer could cose you everything that you've struggled to keep intact.
I've never led any sort of 'stable' life. I was always up and down. What made it worse was that it all sat bottled up inside. I was stifled by everything that I went through. It drove me crazy. Until that day that I literally stumbled over fate. I was in school, walking from one class to another. I stumbled over my own feet. 'Everyone stumbles sometimes,' I said to myself. 'Everyone falls.' Something about that stuck with me and fifteen minutes later, I had half of what would become first song. That was all it took. The floodgates opened.
I always loved music. My mother is a musician - not that anyone's heard of her. But a name doesn't make talent. She shared her passion for music, for making it, with me as I grew up. I fell in love with the Beach Boys when I was a kid. I wanted so badly to do something with music that my brothers and I would take pans and boxes and stuff like that and we'd play 'Band.' Every year I signed up for chorus, though at the time it was just because my mom said I should, and because it was an easy class.
I've always had music. And once I started writing, it became everything to me. Everything I couldn't get out before found it's way onto paper. Every word found a chord, every chord found a tune, every tune found a song. And on more than one ocassion - more than I liked to admit - these songs saved me my sanity. They saved me my life.
When I moved to Florida, I began to understand that I wasn't the only one who was this passionate about music. About having it, about making it, about writing it. I went from band to band my junior and senior year. Then I found Dan, and we found the Vacant Andys. And that's when music became more than my passion, more than my outlet. That's when music became my life.
When I started Dashboard two something years ago, it was nothing to anybody but me. Then my friends heard it. And it wasn't just me anymore. It was me and it was these kids. Kids who knew these pains as much as I did. Who'd been there, too. Who'd been beaten and bruised; torn and tattered. I got through to these kids. I reached out to them the only way I could. Through my music. Through my life. And somehow, I shoed them, 'hey, it's okayh. Everybody stumbles. Everybody falls.'
I never thought that my devotion to my music would be put to the test. I never thought that the one person who was supposed to support me always, love me for everything I am and am not, would force me into something like that.
My entire life, I sepnt trying to find a way for someone to know. For someone to understand. I found that in Dashboard. I found that in these kids. And I found that I can reach them in a way that maybe no one else could. Because we know. Together we know. And I've survived it. If I can, so can they. ANd to know that I can do that for someone, it makes my pain, my suffering, worthwhile.
I love my husband. I love my children. I love my music. I don't enjoy being divided over them. For so long, my music has been everything to me. Then came Jeff, my children. I couldn't breathe without them. But I can't breathe without music.
I can understand why he wants what he does. If I could do it, I would. But I can't. I can't turn my back on these kids. I can't turn my back on my music, on the one part of my life that's always been there; that hasn't betrayed me, that hasn't broken me.
But to be asked to...to be asked to turn away from the only thing in this world that has always and always will be there....that makes me absolutely furious.
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