"The Dogs On Main Street Howl, 'Cos They Understand..." (Musings On Independence Day) · 11:42pm Jul 10th, 2016
Independence Day was just under a week ago. I'm not American, and I don't celebrate the holiday, but it is important to me for another reason - as of the 4th of July, 2016, I am now 20 years old. Two full decades under my belt.
It couldn't come at a stranger time in my life.
Everything I've known has been turned upside down since February of this year, and the last few weeks in particular have been nuts - there's a reason I didn't make a blog sooner to announce my return to hiatus. I haven't had time to worry about even my university work with the shit that's going on, let alone the internet.
The world seems to be going to shit at a pretty similar rate to my life too - you lot over in Hamburgerland have Trump looming on the horizon, but far more personal for me is the now infamous British EU Referendum, or as it's come to be known, Brexit. If it hadn't been for an event only two weeks previous, I would have said it's the most shocked and angry I've ever been in my life - a bunch of pensioners have screwed the younger generations in a way that won't truly be calculable for many years to come. If you are one of the people who voted to Leave, or agree with that stand point - well, I respect your right to have an opinion. As long as you respect my right to tell you to go jump in a lake.
But I suppose I really should stop dancing around the issue, shouldn't I? The reason I disappeared, the reason I've been so absent and making cryptic posts these last few months, the event that turned my world upside down just about a month ago.
My family has been going through some rough times the past few years - specifically, my parents have. Not exactly unusual, I know. But after I went to uni, things changed. At first, it seemed like things might be better at home, but then in February, I started getting weird calls from my mum - I've always been pretty close to her, so it was easy to tell that something was off. By the end of the month, my mother had revealed exactly what was "off". By the end of the next month, it had become sadly clear that my mother was delusional.
What makes this so painful, and so destructive, is that those delusions centre around child sexual abuse. Specifically of my little brother, by my father.
I won't go into the sordid details of what has been happening - you don't want to read it, and I don't want to share it. What I do want to emphasis though is that I have painstakingly followed up on every single thread my mother gave me, investigated every single avenue of possibility that someone might be hurting my brother, and so have the medical, psychiatric and law enforcement authorities of two separate countries. Nothing has happened to him. There are many, many reasons why nothing could have happened to him. And my mother's delusion is very apparent, and very firmly confirmed by the experts.
Things were looking up as June came around. It looked like my mum might be getting the help she needed soon. That, unfortunately, is when she decided to repeat the accusations she had already made in a court - the "event" I mentioned earlier.
So now my family is fractured, probably irreparably, and stuck in a legal case that will probably ruin us. Fun times.
This has been, I would like to think understandably, hard for me. The hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life, to be honest - although I know it's the same for my parents, and one lived through a civil war, so maybe that's not so implausible. I am currently my brothers legal chaperone, as neither parent is allowed to be with him - and while perhaps for some families this might not be so painful, ours has always been a close one. It's hurting everyone.
I couldn't be prouder of my brother though. He is so, so strong.
Independence Day has another meaning for me, too. It's my fathers favourite song.
In case you haven't noticed yet, I am a serious music fan. My music library currently stands at over 21,000 songs and is still growing. Bruce Springsteen has been a part of that collection from the start - The Rising was one of the albums that soundtracked car rides when I was a kid. But as I've become older, while other bands have fallen to the wayside, the his incredible lyricism has kept him a firm place in my heart. In particular, some of his songs have given me a lot of strength this last few months. "Independence Day" is one of them - I have come to know both my parents far more in the last few months than I have in 20 years, both the good and the bad. "Thunder Road" - the idea of accepting that your life is what it is, and taking the joy you can - has been another. But the one that's quoted up in the title of this blog is the one that stands out most to me, in a sense. "The Promised Land" is in a way one of his darkest songs - a bitter, sarcastic decimation of the American Dream couched in a cheerful tune - but it's refrain somehow struck me as strangely hopeful too. Despite all the crap in his life, the protagonist still "believe(s) in the Promised Land". Still fights for that light at the end of the tunnel. He'll never know how grateful I am to him for the music he's given to this world.
My love of music extends to live performances, and I've had the pleasure and privilege of seeing a lot of very good live acts over the years. Muse lives up their reputation, as do the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. For all that the music press turns up their noses at them, Coldplay have enough energy on stage to power a city. You can't help but sing along. Elbow is a relatively obscure British alt rock group, whose singer has both a voice that could soothe a grizzly bear and the frankly magical talent of getting the entirety of a crowd of 80,000 people to sing along to their songs about 30 seconds after getting on stage. I had the rare privilege of seeing Blur during their brief reunion tour (that's the Gorillaz singers old band, for those of you that don't follow '90's British music) and they were utterly spectacular.
But not a single one of those bands holds a candle to the Boss. I saw Bruce and the E Street Band just a couple of days ago - it had been planned in advance as a birthday present, and luck had it that we could in fact go. It was one of the best nights of my life. They played for 4 hours, and burned through a setlist straight out of my dreams.
I've changed a lot since February. Grown up, I like to think. Hard times do that to you, and these have been hard. But life goes on, and there's still happiness, and still hope even in catastrophe.
I'm 20 - not really a boy any more. A man, though a young one. And you know what? I do believe in the Promised Land. Things are going to get better. Not now - but they will.
I likely won't be returning to Fimfic in any serious capacity for a while. Certainly not until September, and it really depends where things go after that. My skype account too, I'm not really checking. But I do get email notifications for every comment and every PM sent to me, and I guarantee you I will answer them. So stay in touch. It'd be nice to hear from some friendly folks every once in a while.
But for now, it's time to say goodbye.
-Abraham Lincoln
It's not a problem at all, Meri. Take care of yourself and your family first, FiM and pony can wait for you. :)
Cheers!
4082818
I never really studied American History. Lincoln is one of the reasons I kind of wish I had.
Thank you for sharing this. They are most definitely comforting words.
4082823
Cheers yourself! It's good to hear from you Zodiac - and thanks.
Primey i'm here for you, you are one of my dearest friends. PM me and i'll give you my email so we can talk.
There's a lot of things I want to say here, and not a single one of them feels right.
I don't have the right words for what you're going through right now. I don't know it anywhere near well enough, at any level, for any comment I make to feel appropriate; sympathy? Reassurance? What do any of those actually mean when the gap between experiences is so profound? Yes, I feel awful that you should have to go through something so terrible; yes I want to give you some kind of hope that you'll be OK and things will get better. But how do those NOT sound like so much hollow promises? Even this paragraph, trying to find my own way to a sentiment for your sake that feels at all worthwhile, feels like only so much excuse-making for MY sake.
But even for all that...I mean, it's all true. Yeah, I hate knowing you've got to go through something that fundamentally awful. And yeah, I hope your feeling that things can and will get better holds true. I really want that to be true for you. And I just hope my saying that helps, however little.
And y'know, for whatever it's worth? I too had the honor of seeing The Boss live in concert a few years ago. It really was a pretty amazing thing. His is the song that lives in my heart for Applejack in Love, too.
Dude. That sucks. Nothing else to it. That sucks.
Like, I know I don't know you that well, but 1(714) 496-3119 if you ever need someone to vent to. Take care, Meri.
4083331 it's hard to say what you want to say. But I think that it shows you care a lot.
4082858
Thanks Filly. I'll pop you a message in a bit.
4083331
You know, there's an idea that's really taken root these days about not being able to understand another's experiences unless you've been through them yourself. I've always found it a vaguely irritating concept, but I can understand why it exists - I could never have imagined what it was like to be in this situation before it happened. Similarly, unless you've been through something similar, it might be difficult to really get what's going on. And I get what it's like being on your end too - I've had some friends go through some nasty shit, and sometimes I really didn't know what to say.
But I can honestly say that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you don't have exactly the right words, what matters is that you cared enough to put some words down in the first place. Having messages like this from people I know, people who I respect and like, is honestly fantastic for me. When all the shit going on is getting me down, it's the little things that make me smile. So I can confirm that yes, it does help. Super Trampoline down below me is right about that, it really does.
Back on a slightly more cheerful topic - I haven't listened to Born In The USA as much as his earlier albums + The Rising, but I'm going to have to change that. I'd forgotten how good this one was!
4083724
Thank you man. Really - I was honestly pretty touched by the phone number offer too. I probably won't call - I do have friends I've been talking to, and I'm sure you don't need some random British kid spilling his woes at you out of nowhere - but I really do appreciate the offer.
I congratulate you for writing so candidly about such a difficult subject. May you be graced by strength in these turbulent times, and I hope that, somehow, you and your family will be granted peace.
4085174 First, apologies for the late reply; things got very busy very quickly on my end.
Second...well, the simplest answer feels like the best one here, so. Good. I'm glad. I'm VERY glad to know that. *hug*
4086797
Thank you GrayMane. I hope we find some peace too.
4089287
I invite you to look at how late my own reply is, and not worry about it!
4098028 I will do my level best. ^_^