Storytime….

 

U2 – Spanish Eyes (Official Music Video) – YouTube

 

Picture it…………3 days before Christmas, 1987.  A young woman (that would be me) receives a phone call on her parents land line.  Tower Records was calling to tell me the Album I had been waiting on was (finally) in.  U2, Spanish Eyes – the B side of the single I Still Haven’t Found What I’ve Been Looking For.

“Can you hold it for me?” I asked pleadingly.  It was in high demand at the time.  I was told they couldn’t hold it for me but there was enough copies – if I could make it there in time.  The store was a good 20 miles from my parents house – it was rush hour – but it was mostly freeway and I knew my little Honda Civic could get me there in time.

“Wanna go get my record at Towers?” I called out to my younger brother.  He knew I had been waiting on the call.

“Yeah!”  he said.

So telling my grandmother and great uncle, who had just arrived for the holidays, that I had to make a very important trip into the city to pick up a long desired album, I said I’d be back as soon as I could.  “Tell mom and dad where I am” I added, thinking I probably wouldn’t be home before they got home from work.

I was after that B side song.  LOOOOOVED it ever since my best friend’s boyfriend played it one evening at a party.  It was an instant “I LOVE THAT SONG I MUST HAVE IT” moment.  I must have had him play it a dozen times or more that night.

Such wonderful, simple times.  Music, friends and parties were my joy back then.  College was, well, just something I did because I didn’t know what else to do.  Seemed like the “right” thing.  But if you were to ask me what I really loved, I’d of said hanging with my friends, dance clubs (with espress shots afterwards to get me home), listening to music and long drives into the city.

The drive out to Tower Records is a faint memory.  My aging brain doesn’t fully recall the moment I had it in my hands.  A flash of a memory which includes a line into the store.  Driving fast to get there in time to score that record.  Brother and I talking the way teen siblings do when out of the house – out for an adventure.

Tonight as I crawled around on my knees, holding a dust pan and hand held broom, sweeping up crumbs and pieces of cheese left behind by my own teenager, I was called to remember that adventure, that song.  I was struck by the difference of today and back then.  I remembered the song and my adventure out to get it.  Slowly I began to remember hearing it for the first time – who introduced it to me.

Kids.  Enjoying life.  Reminds me of that song line:  “We were young, wild and free.”

What the hell happened to me, I paused, looking down at the damn dustpan I was holding.  I thought about how much I now live in my mind – my brain – like a soldier – enduring this life – enduring this experience – pushing away so much.  CONTROLLING so much because somewhere along the way, my life got OUT of control.

Day in and day out.  Battles – real and imagined in the subconscious.  Focused like a Lion to push through the trauma energies.  Dodging things like demons and spike protein.  Battling narcissistic personalities.  Keeping my kiddo safe in this hell hole of fake kids and creepy drag queens and gender-neutral bathrooms.   Deciding what to put off next month because I cannot afford to get those sheets for our bed or those slippers for my child.  Waking up in the middle of the night due to energies and battles and wondering how the hell I am going to keep up with E V E R Y T H I N G.  

It’s taken a toll on me.  A. serious. fuching. toll.

THIS is who I’ve become?  THIS is how I spend my Saturday night?

Really?!

No.  NO NO NO NO NO!!

That girl that raced across town and into the city – fearless and determined – still lives inside me.  She still wants to play.  She still wants to have adventures.  She still wants to hang out with friends and dance wildly and listen to ridiculously loud music.  All. Night. Long.  She doesn’t want to be so damn sensitive anymore.  Or rigid.  She doesn’t want her body to reject things like Long Island Ice Teas and THC and loud noises.   She wants to eat a greasy burger with fried onions after a night of partying (those were kind of my hangover remedy at the time – believe it or not).  She wants her brain and body and mind to be healed so she can go to a club with loud thumping music and flashing lights.  Smoke-filled room.  She wants to be able to get into her car and go ANYWHERE without panic setting in and taking over.  She’s tired of this body – this mind – and she doesn’t want to battle with it anymore.  She just wants to be FREE.

FREE and ALIVE.  Again.

So yes she’s still in there – but so is the me I’ve become.  And it’s a paradox.  And I’m not quite sure how to fix that one.  Or even if I can.

Listening to Spanish Eyes – that “get me Home”.  The driving beat – taking me back to that time before I consciously knew about all of “this”.  The time when I still had my family intact.  When I felt there was NOTHING I couldn’t do.  Absolutely nothing.  The world was going to embrace me, my inner lioness in becoming reminded me daily.  Untouchable confidence with a fiery feistiness, huge energy, a wide-open Heart, and always up for an adventure.  I was a glorious, blossoming young woman back then.  A lethal combination in this matrix – TO the matrix – but only if protected and aware of my real surroundings.  Which I wasn’t either.

So today I’m the jaded, near depleted, apathetic, exhausted soldier of war version – still holding on to the REAL Version of me before the sheot set in – that gloriously wild open hearted young woman – just wanting those Spanish Eyes to get her Home and restore her back to the Amazing Female she is.

💖💖💖