First Love and U2 - #GBE2

For my friends who’ve been reading my blog for a while, this is a bit of a departure because I’m writing this post in response to a “blog hop” called Great Blog Experience 2 (GBE2). Hope you and my new readers enjoy it.

When I think about first love, I think about the song “Bad” by U2. I know, it’s a stretch, but hang with me, I’ll make the connection. Okay, so I was sixteen. Up to that point, I would consider my success with the opposite sex to be very close to nil. I managed to get injured playing basketball that year and had to endure one of the ultimates in high school embarrassment: having to be dropped off at school by my dad in his slightly old pickup truck… early.

Then she walked into my life one day as I waited for school to start, sprawled near my locker in a flexible leg brace. She was a little ball of energy, cute, smiley and obviously interested in me. She was also smart and able and willing to talk with me at length (for a bookish teenager like me, this was very important). Being with her was different, new and exciting. When she took the initiative and kissed me on one of our first dates, I was smitten. I even found myself at her house when no one else was home, and her showing me her bedroom. Did I seize the opportunity? Hah! No, I didn’t even take the hint. Instead we ended up necking out in the back yard.

Two weeks later she had to leave for a pre-planned trip with the school band, I think it was. I pined for her and wrote dreadfully sappy things in my journal the entire week she was gone. And when she came back... she broke my heart. It seems she’d met another guy on her trip. She wanted her freedom. Maybe they’d even done some things with this guy that I hadn’t even thought were in the realm of possibility (I heard from other interested parties, anyway).

As many teenagers do when they're upset (or angry, or hurt, etc.), I put on my favorite music and holed up in my room with the door closed. At that time (yes, it was 1987!), my favorite band was U2, so I was listening to my tape of "The Unforgettable Fire" on my cassette player. I may have been using headphones, I don't remember.

As you probably know, a key element to U2's success is the emotion and angst evident in their music and their lyrics. So the previous songs on the tape primed for the band's most emotional song (IMHO), "Bad". The song starts quietly "If you twist and turn away", from there it builds, "if I could, you know I would, if I could I would let it go". When he reaches the chorus, Bono hits a note that perhaps isn't the prettiest, but in terms of its resonance to the human soul and heart I consider to be absolutely perfect, shouting out, "I'm wide awake!" At this point, my sixteen year-old heartbroken self burst into sobs. I don't know if they could be heard throughout the house, but it felt that way to me. I didn't care. I was wide awake to the fact that feeling I had felt that I thought was love (I even wrote that I loved her in my journal!) was not felt in return. Wide awake to the fact that I'd opened my heart innocently to someone who could squash it so blithely. I cried hard through the rest of the song, crying in a way I hadn't since I was twelve and lost my cool playing basketball (that's another story).

Now that could have been the end of the story, a fairly common story of the heartbreak of teenage puppy love. Instead, over the years, the emotion of that moment and its connection to that song has remained. Not just remained, if anything it has strengthened and deepened. It doesn't manifest itself in anger or sadness about the lost love anymore. What remains is a powerful connection to "Bad" and the U2 of that era. When I hear "Bad", as often as not, my eyes mist over, my stomach tightens, my soul lifts up. It's no longer negative emotion. I would call it "joy", the joy of connecting deeply to the soul of a song. Would I thank that girl for helping me appreciate the soul of music if I ever saw her again? No, probably not. Given how much I love music I probably would have gained that appreciation on my own. Or would I have?

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