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A month ago or so
I sat down to watch a show.
Melissa Etheridge is on. OK!
She'll be singing a brand new song!
A long-time fan, I'm, always there.
I'm a Lover of her music,
and the passionate language of her songs,
'Cause nobody aches just to hold you
...even when the night is thin...
I watched the evolution over time,
Over time... heard the story, the familiar -
The stuff of which her fans are made.
She FELT things, she knew things.
I listened to her lyrics and at times, I fell inside.
Other times I crawled inside...
that indescribable pleasure/pain,
Exquisite beauty, a symbiotic lust,
We all want to touch it - one more time.
Just one more time but, instead
We listen to this woman, this prolific,
Prolific artist, while she says it just right...exactly how we'd say it
......wishing for us that one special Love...
That aches in all the same ways,
you know, like the way I do.
Over time, I saw the energy change,
In sickness and in health.
In sickness and to health.
You just had to love her!
This is one of those break-ups that surprise and disappoint,
Like James and Carly, Tom and Nicole, Brad and Jen,
When you just want to slap someone up the side of the head and say
Even though you don't know the whole story,
Even though it's none of your business...
Geez! Who woulda thought? It seemed so permanent...
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?
She's talking to Oprah - "it was mutual,"
No it wasn't, I said out loud
to my grown up son, also a fan.
You could see the energy had evolved again
To something else entirely,
To something wholly unwhole, with a vacancy sign where that Love used to be…
And it didn't exactly look like she had been settling for anything less,
said my grown up son, also a fan...
But something was surely different -
And it's best to speak true - right?
Mutual?
Where'd you read that it wasn't? my son wondered out loud.
I never know how to say
i just know
Without sounding, well, you know.
And who am I to judge?
It was just an observation - (before the barrage of media hype)
Not a judgment at all.
It's all right there, between the lines.
Once before, when left alone,
She sang about a Breakdown.
There was damage in the wake,
Betrayal, the abandonment of promises made,
Moments that felt just like dying -
And there were kids, perhaps old enough to perceive the end of an era.
Feeling raw, struggling, and coming through...
There was weight loss, and
Transformation.
There was INSANE, self-medication,
From which she was led,
by a gorgeous blond, an angel,
to a better, BETTER place!
There was Healing.
But, first,
Then, browsing, days later,
I came across Hollywood Farm Girl.
Being a writer, I read.
Good writer, good stuff,
Fun to read (but for the sense of betrayal-
it was palpable)
Going back,
Trying to remember,
When was that, and
What year were those twins born?
Shortly before my little one...
Hey, we all know everybody makes mistakes.
We trust the wrong ones.
We hope for the best
and know we got it
when "The Best" comes next.
As, surely, it did, that one true love.
(And now is what promises are for.)
In sickness and to health,
Till the death of us do we part.
because now there are toddlers -
Little ones, same age as the one toddler
I spend my "day-in-day-out toddler reality" rearing -
(Up to her ears in toilet-training toddlers indeed!)
My own curly-haired toddler
Has me up to my own ears,
my head barely above water,
While I'm the only one in his world right now
who's even trying to tread water.
Read between those lines.
Because here, no one even reads the stuff written right on the damned lines.
How do they walk away? And what about the kids?
And, now, how do we teach them trust?
What are people thinking?
Wouldn't Fearless Love hang in there?
I'll bet our Hollywood Farm Girl would agree.
Bet she wouldn't have done, or settled for, anything less.
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