To-night
I listened to Lighthouse Family ...and for the first time in years I
didn't cry.
We all have songs/albums that
make that transition: from those that we just can't hear without
wanting to punch walls; through those that we can't listen to without
crying; to the moment when the experience becomes bitter-sweet. (And
then, presumably to the morning we simply pack it all in and start
listening to Radio 4.)
Lighthouse
Family have, up until to-day it seems, been in the category of
that music one just can't listen to without snivelling.
For
a start I was considerably younger and my breasts hadn't commenced
The Great Descent: in a decidedly lopsided manner. (When , some
years back I had had a procedure done on one boob I had jokingly
instructed my female surgeon to add in a little tuck while she was
about it. It appears she responded in a half-joking manner.)
But the
reason for my Pavlovian reaction to Lighthouse Family has now reached
the point where I only react relatively dry-eyed because that whole
period of my life has marked a division point. The Cireena who first
listened to these songs has morphed into the Cireena sitting in the
candlelight and incense and typing this . Like the group who made
these songs, we've all moved on since then. It's just taken me a
while .
Nearly
broke the no-tears rule when I Wish I Could Know How It Felt To Be
Free came on. And I felt like crying for the person who first
heard this track. And who never had dreamed she would get free
herself.
I
am not placing the burden of my metamorphosis solely on the music
itself, of course. But hearing words like When you're
close to tears, remember, one day it wall all be over, someday we're
gonna get so high...? after
hearing those words I realised that that lo! It has come to
pass. (That's biblical “Lo”, not txtspk lol btw)
It is
all over. All the fear that used to nearly make me wet my knickers;
all the humiliation; the black weight I always carried on my back.
I feel a
great, overwhelming anger inside me now when I think of that period
of time: a time when glimpses of what was possible were just
starting to trickle through to the hope-less person I had become.
(Goddammit! I want to cry: No human being should ever be allowed to
do that to another human being. )
Human
bondage is a shameful crime. I want to be indignant. I want to
shout it out.
For years
I haven't allowed myself to express the outrage and the contempt and,
yes, the sheer anger that was once was constrained by absolute
terror; and the fear of embarrassing my offspring.
Yet now,
as I sit and listen to tracks whose every beat, every chord brings
back memories of a time that transitioned into this time, I
realise that the last thing I have to do to dispel this anger is to
express it.
My kids
are kids no longer kids . Too much water has flowed under too many
bridges for anyone to make a connection between that time and this
time in respect of them..
Another
thing happened tonight when I walked over to my computer and suddenly
got a shock – the person I could see in the mirror looked nothing
like the person I know I am. Inside I'm a timorous, cowering
beastie. I am dumpy with flashes, perhaps, of looking somewhat
pathetic. All my clothes are second-hand. I'm on Benefits.
But the
woman I saw in the mirror as though dispassionately assessing a
stranger, looked like the sort of woman I myself would find kind of
interesting. I tried to imagine my young self somehow being able to
see into the future and encountering what she would one day turn
into.
And I no
longer feel, as I did for so long, that she would cower back in
fear or revulsion from the vision. That young me would, I think,
look at this me and give a wry grin: I think the two of us
would get on really well.
Yep. I'm
finally understanding that “It's been too long [I've} been under
a raincloud.....”
