Army with love

Music has a way of saving a soul. It comes to you at the right time, and if you listen closely, you can find in its notes the answers that you need.

I was in pieces when they found me. My husband had decided he could no longer tolerate my addiction, and one day he grabbed a suitcase and our sons and left me alone in a broken home. I started taking even more pills and I was unable to get out of my bed. I got fired from my job through a phone call loaded with yells and insults. A week had passed, and I hadn’t even noticed.

My only friend took care of me. She brought me food and made sure I was safe, but without missing the chance to comment that I had looked for this myself. And after three weeks, she said she couldn’t keep dealing with my problems anymore. She said she could no longer recognize me in that damaged personality. She was tired of my grouchy face and ungrateful comments.

“I know this is happening because of your childhood issues, but you can’t expect the rest of us to put up with your shitty attitude”, she said after I yelled at her for breaking one of my plates. My mother had given them to us in our wedding.

She didn’t come back again.

I even took a desperate step I never thought I would: I asked my mom if I could come live with her again. She said no. There was no spare bed for me, so I had to stay in my apartment, filled with the echoes of my shattered family.

My mom, always so cold, not wanting to get involved in my problems, as if I hadn’t learned addiction and violence from her.

I called my husband dozens of times, but he wouldn’t pick up. I had no news of my children. Until one rainy night, he texted me. He said not to contact them again until I had dealt with my addiction and anger issues. But how could I quit my pills when they were my only friends, my only consolation?

I drove my car to the sea and stopped in front of a cliff, aware that I only had to press the accelerator and my misery would end. Oh, sweet relief. I desired it so badly. Yet why wasn’t I pressing it?

A song I didn’t know came on the radio. I listened to the words to escape my mind for a second, with the engine on and one foot over the gas pedal.

Life goes on, the band was singing. Who are these guys, and who do they think they are, telling me that life goes on? They were not in my shoes. They were probably rich people talking from a pedestal, as it usually is with that kind of messages. I had no one, no family or friends to support me, no job, no money and a growing debt. I laughed hysterically. How could someone like me just go on?

An impulse drove me to record a video, with the cliff and the sea as scenery and the song playing in the background. I posted it in my stories, thinking it might give someone a clue of my goodbye. After all, their lives would go on without me.

As soon as I posted it, I received a message. It was from a girl I didn’t know in person. One of those people you follow and never talk to. Valentina was her name.

“Do you like that group? I’m a huge fan!”, she said.

I replied, distractedly, mostly uninterested.

“I don’t really know them, but the song was nice”.

“Oh, you’ll love them! Let me send you a couple of videos”.

And there I was, watching these guys on my phone for over an hour. I drove back home with new air in my lungs. And spent the rest of the night watching videos of the band. The performances and stages were captivating, and a smile was drawn on my face for the first time in months while I looked at them.

I was mesmerized by their voices, but something else caught me entirely. Their words. Not only their lyrics, which were pure poetry, but also the things they said to people in their interviews and speeches.

I remembered the days of my teenage years, when I had been a fan of another band with a few of my friends. We knew all their lyrics by heart and laughed at the jokes they made in their interviews. But it was nothing like this.

It didn’t matter that their music was not my style, this band had managed to create a real relationship with people. How was that even possible? I read hundreds of comments, and in both the band’s and the fans’ words there was a kind of complicity, an agreement that they would always protect each other. And they did.

“Know yourself. Speak yourself. Love yourself”, they said countless times. Worn phrases I had heard a thousand times before and held no meaning to me. Because how can you love yourself when you don’t know how, when everyone else makes you feel like you’re hard to love?

“I don’t need anyone’s permission to love myself”, one of their lyrics said. And as the days went by, I even forgot to take pills while watching them, and the more I learned about the band, the bigger my admiration for them grew. And those old phrases started to gain meaning. Because it’s not the same to hear them on TV or read them in a random magazine than to receive them from people you look up to. Because these guys had been rejected not only by all the music industries and the media, but also received the hate and prejudice of millions around the world every day. And for a decade they had kept on making the music they believed in, trying to send a message that would reach people’s hearts. And not only they had gathered millions behind them, but they had learned to love themselves and were on a mission to help their fans do the same.

And the love they between them. The way they accepted each other and blended their voices together as one was the type of love that I so desperately needed in my life.

Without giving it much thought, I accepted to go with Valentina to a meeting of their fans without knowing anyone, not sure what I was hoping to find. And I found it. Those girls accepted me immediately, no prejudice, no expectations. They were between twenty and sixty-five years old, all from different places and backgrounds and with different beliefs, yet they had found a common love that had brought them together.

“We are all the same, we all suffer. That’s what our boys have taught us. They show us that even people like them feel the same as us”, Valentina said.

It wasn’t hard to trust them like it usually was for me. So I told them my story, part of me expecting them to reject me for being an addict and a mess of a person, but instead of that, they held my hands and cried with me, saying that I didn’t deserve to be alone.

“You are a unique being, no one else can do the things you can do. If you didn’t drive off that cliff it’s because a part of you wants to live again. Listen to that voice inside you. That’s your one true love”.

That was it. What I was looking for.

Myself.

My new friends took me to a rehabilitation center, where I stayed for six months. They visited me once a week and texted me every day. And I used all my free time to learn more about this band and their fans. It was a worldwide community, mostly made up of losers like me. People who had trouble finding their voice, people who had been on the brink of a cliff that would end it all. And now they were dancing, creating, rising, and telling their stories.

I had wanted to be a writer since I was a child, but my parents and teachers had told me that art and literature were not a profession, only a hobby. That I should use my time for important things, like studying and working. But now I was starting to dream again, and I had learned that there was nothing more important in life than being me. So I began to write my story.

By the time I finished my rehab and contacted my husband again, I had found a new person in me. Someone bright and complete. Someone who had found reasons to keep going. And I loved her.

I put on a summer dress and took my sons to the park. For a while they looked at me as if they didn’t know me, unsure whether to trust me or not, but in our time apart I had learned how to summon my inner child. And after hours of playing and laughing, they accepted their new mother as she really was.

It had taken too long for me to meet her too. She had been there all along, I only had to listen. Now, behind me there were seven musicians who wanted me to be myself and millions of people who understood me. I was capable of anything.