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Rush and the Broken People


GedsJeans
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Garden Dancer, I lost myself in music too. And my writing. In my stories, I could be the person I wasn't in the real world. Along with my short stories, I kept journals. I had at least fifteen of them. One day in the mid-eighties, a friend of mine told me to destroy them. I did. Just as well. Who wants to remember what is better left forgotten.

 

At least you had someone to defend you at one point. I never had that and have always had to fight my own battles most times looking like the lone loony. The people I trusted and counted on the most betrayed me the worst. They still do.

Oh man, writing. Ha, you should see some of the wild and crazy stuff I've written!Creating another entire universe, where I make the rules! Life is good in those other universes...

 

And d@mn, I wish everyone who ever needed, could have had a friend like mine. She was a huge help, and she literally changed the way I thought about myself.

Having known her, I feel truly blessed. Without her in my life, I don't know if I would have gotten through high school alive...

 

I don't even have the words, hon... fighting the battles on your own... That takes some serious guts and strength.!.

And if that makes you look like the loony, well then, I wanna be just as loony as you!

 

Rock on, sweet-heart.!.

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Here. I want to share with you the lyrics to a song that was sung by a group who were to me in the late sixties and early seventies what Rush is to many of you here. Had Rush been well known back then, it may very well have been them who were my number one band. Anyway, I just listened to the album this song is from the other day. Even though it came out in 1972, when I hear this song, especially the last verse, the tears flow. I wish I could report that things have gotten better in my life, but I cannot. The only thing that has changed is that I am older. Much older. And, at my age, you just don't care that much anymore. I can't go back and start again. I have to live with the shambles of a life that had so much promise. Unfortunately, I won't find out the answer to many of my "Why?'s" until I die. It won't matter then, but it will be nice to finally find out.

 

The lyrics:

 

Where is this place that we have found

Nobody knows where we are bound

I long to hear, I need to see

'Cause I've shed tears too many for me

 

But I'm never gonna lose your precious gift

It will always be that way

'Cause I know I'm going to find my peace of mind

Someday...

 

On the wind soaring free

Spread your wings

I'm beginning to see

Out of mind far from view

Beyond the reach of the nightmare come true

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Garden Dancer... wow. That was very difficult to read. Not due to any fault on your end (you are a beautiful, powerful writer), but because you suffered so deeply and for so long. My heart hurt so much for you throughout your entire story. Your descriptions of the cutting gave me cold chills and unpleasant deja vu. I've been there, my friend, and believe me... I know. :hug2: I'm glad that you've found your way out of the darkness.

 

Going back and rereading this thread, there is so much pain lying just beneath the surface of all of us here... but there is even more strength! We are a TOUGH bunch! Rush should be proud of us!!! :) I've never been more honored to find myself amongst such a steadfast and resilient bunch, men and women alike.

 

Lorraine, I'm extremely sorry about your journals. I make a living as a writer and I can't imagine the gut-wrenching pain of losing 15 journals worth of the outpourings from my soul. :( You and I are also part of the "Loser No One Ever Stood Up For" crowd. I used to get pounded on at school, everywhere from the gym locker room to the cafeteria to being jumped on my walk home. I remember one time getting a huge, bloody clump of my hair ripped off my scalp by this ENORMOUS girl named Michelle who wore pink lipstick with black lipliner. No one ever helped me, because I was a "little weirdo". Sometimes even the teachers were slow to intercede. I can't dwell on it too much because it makes my blood boil. The world is a cruel place. I understand, though, and I know your pain. :hug2:

 

Blue J, I would love to read your project. Maybe you could post it in segments here in the thread, or consecutively in another thread? If that doesn't work, maybe you could upload it somewhere as a Word document and then post the link?

 

Much love to all,

GJ :heart:

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GedsJeans, I just thought of that yesterday- I could post in multiple parts here (if you can all stand to read that much, hahaha). That is probably what I will end up doing. I'm going to make concerted effort to get the whole thing finished sometime this week.

 

On the subject of lost journals, I have some experience with that. I started writing some really dark (and really pretty bad) poetry when I was about 16 or 17...and I kept writing through college and into my mid 20s. And through that time, I got to be a better writer- I mean, there were a lot of things that I was really happy with. But in one of my moves between apartments, I lost two journals and an entire notebook full of poems that I had written between 1995 and '98. It's still upsetting to me, even now! And ever since then, I haven't been nearly as prolific. The muse only visits once in a very great while, anymore.

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Garden Dancer... wow. That was very difficult to read. Not due to any fault on your end (you are a beautiful, powerful writer), but because you suffered so deeply and for so long. My heart hurt so much for you throughout your entire story. Your descriptions of the cutting gave me cold chills and unpleasant deja vu. I've been there, my friend, and believe me... I know. :hug2: I'm glad that you've found your way out of the darkness.

 

Going back and rereading this thread, there is so much pain lying just beneath the surface of all of us here... but there is even more strength! We are a TOUGH bunch! Rush should be proud of us!!! :) I've never been more honored to find myself amongst such a steadfast and resilient bunch, men and women alike.

 

 

GJ :heart:

:hug2: Hard to write, too. Coz I have put those things behind me, but when I write it or tell it, I have to remember that I lived it, and remember the way it felt. And there's a piece of me still at the core that still hurts, and is still scared. That piece can never fully heal. The most we can do is leave her in peace, leave her to sleep.

 

And, uhh, sorry for the chilling deja vu... but I kind of couldn't help that. How else can one convey the mind-set.?. and the way, and the why of cutting... Coz a lot of people don't really get why. It is a form of control. I take control of this pain. When there is so much pain that is outside of your control, at least there is one thing that is in your own hands. It's messed up, but that's what it was for me.

 

And yeah, we are a tough bunch! Sometimes I think about it... the saying "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger"

And I can't help feeling (perhaps a bit like Neil Peart.?.) "OK, but did I need to be this strong.?." (seriously, that sounds like something he might say... must be a Virgo thing LOL!)

I bet, if they ever saw this thread, they'd be proud. I know I am. I'm proud to be a Rush fan, proud of the strength I see in the rest of y'all.

:hug2: :hug2: :hug2: :heart: :heart: :heart: :hug2: :hug2: :hug2:

Edited by Garden Dancer
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Oh Lord... Yah it's a Virgo thing.
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Oh Lord... Yah it's a Virgo thing.

:LOL: ...and we all know that Virgo freakin' rock the Zodiac hardest! (or something...)

[super cheesy] Hey baby, what's your sign.?. [/super cheesy] :laughing yellow guy:

 

ok. I'm done...

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Oh Lord... Yah it's a Virgo thing.

:LOL: ...and we all know that Virgo freakin' rock the Zodiac hardest! (or something...)

[super cheesy] Hey baby, what's your sign.?. [/super cheesy] :laughing yellow guy:

 

ok. I'm done...

 

Sagittarius married to a Virgo.

 

(yikes!)

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Oh Lord... Yah it's a Virgo thing.

:LOL: ...and we all know that Virgo freakin' rock the Zodiac hardest! (or something...)

[super cheesy] Hey baby, what's your sign.?. [/super cheesy] :laughing yellow guy:

 

ok. I'm done...

 

Sagittarius married to a Virgo.

 

(yikes!)

Hmm. I've got an Aquarian sweetie. :blink: Never a dull moment! :laughing yellow guy:

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Gedsjeans, well done for your touching and brave posts! And also to the others who have felt inspired to share their stories. Ive been in tears on and off whilst reading through this thread. Here's mine...

 

First off I just want to say that by comparison to what some of you have been through I've lived a charmed life... My parents were loving and never violent or abusive, but...

 

I was bullied on and off most of my life. Particularly my childhood. At school, at home (my sister was shall we say "embarrassed" to be my sister.... We are MUCH closer now) at church I once went through a humiliating experience in front of the congregation and for three years at one of my old jobs.

 

Needless to say I've felt like the outsider my whole life. Despised for bring different and, because I never learned how to stick up for myself, an easy target. .

 

I had a best friend at 10... And I loved her... Then one day, over a trivial thing, she turned on me... She had been poisoned by another who hated me and she did a complete 180 degrees... Threatened to beat me up after school, shouting, swearing... She never actually hit me. She didn't need to. She broke my heart... The consequences have lingered throughout my life.

 

Always on the outside. Never accepted. Mostly cause of my looks but also cause of how I think, the things I say... No one to help. Their "advice" as nothing but hot air, none of it worked. Quite a lot of the time it was my fault "You should have said this..." Bit too late after its happened "Then you should remember for next time they say it!" Next time never came... Useless.

 

I retreated into my own worlds. They can't hurt me there...

 

My father passed away when I was fourteen. Lung cancer. But before he died he left me a special gift. He introduced me to Mike Oldfield... I was a prog fan years before I knew what prog was!

 

Back before I was a Rush fan I was into Iron Maiden. Then I went through something of a traumatic experience.. Least ways for me... I know this may sound silly, but I tried to read a Stephen King novel. The Green Mile. There's a particular harrowing scene that affected me very badly. At the time I'd seen the movie many times and thought I'd be ok with it. I was wrong... I had nightmares, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat... Everything reminded me of it.... I was in a semi permanent state of hypertension... Meditation and time helped heal that, but afterwards I found I couldn't listen to IM anymore... I was crushed as I loved them.

 

A few years later I was saying to hubby that I wanted to get into a band. He said "Here try these guys, they're called Rush." He brought out a copy of The Spirit Of Radio best of and we sat and listened to it the whole way through... And I liked it!

 

At first I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get into their music but over time, when I realised I could I grew to love them!

 

Then in 2011 I got to see them live for the first time... And I cried... Not just because of the excitement... But because the rock chick in me could rock again and because of how much their lyrics spoke to me. They say "It's ok to be you" and things about forgiveness and letting the past go. I'm still working on that bit. Sometimes my past sneaks up on me.

 

Then a few months ago I decided to give Maiden another go... And I could listen to their work again! Since then I've bought their entire catalogue and listen on a regular basis. It's like with getting into Rush not only gave me my old life back (before reading that book) but its also led to something of a journey of self discovery for me which parts of which I'm not ready to talk about just yet.

 

So a lot of Rush's lyrics resonated with me. Subdivisions has been mentioned...

 

This time next week I'll be at my second ever Rush concert... I'm sure I will cry again!

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Back before I was a Rush fan I was into Iron Maiden. Then I went through something of a traumatic experience.. Least ways for me... I know this may sound silly, but I tried to read a Stephen King novel. The Green Mile. There's a particular harrowing scene that affected me very badly. At the time I'd seen the movie many times and thought I'd be ok with it. I was wrong... I had nightmares, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat... Everything reminded me of it.... I was in a semi permanent state of hypertension... Meditation and time helped heal that, but afterwards I found I couldn't listen to IM anymore... I was crushed as I loved them.

 

 

Thank you for sharing your story.

 

:hug2:

 

What you're saying doesn't sound weird at all and I will tell you why. I grew up in a family of Stephen King buffs and while I never really freaked out while watching the movies it was what happened afterwards that made me stop watching them forever. I'd have TERRIBLE nightmares, horrifying, vivid, scary nightmares immediately after watching them and then for days after. I've never had any movies affect me that way, usually if they are going to scare me, disturb me, or freak me out, they do so while they're being watched. I think he's jinxed. :)

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Gangsterfurious, I honestly can't tell you how grateful I am to read your response! It's a massive comfort! Hubby watched me go through that but he has no idea how many sleepless nights I endured whilst that was going on, because every time I tried to sleep the nightmares came and even if I woke myself up, whenever I went back to sleep, I was back in the nightmare. Sometimes I couldn't even sleep because of the hypertension.

 

I've tried to tell others before, but they didn't seem to get it and I could never really explain it properly. That's why I hardly talk about it.

 

Thank you!!

 

:hug2: :heart:

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Gangsterfurious, I honestly can't tell you how grateful I am to read your response! It's a massive comfort! Hubby watched me go through that but he has no idea how many sleepless nights I endured whilst that was going on, because every time I tried to sleep the nightmares came and even if I woke myself up, whenever I went back to sleep, I was back in the nightmare. Sometimes I couldn't even sleep because of the hypertension.

 

I've tried to tell others before, but they didn't seem to get it and I could never really explain it properly. That's why I hardly talk about it.

 

Thank you!!

 

:hug2: :heart:

 

You are welcome! I totally relate. I was 16 when I stopped watching them and I am 30 now and still remember waking up in the middle of the night completely freaked out and scared to go back to sleep.

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Back before I was a Rush fan I was into Iron Maiden. Then I went through something of a traumatic experience.. Least ways for me... I know this may sound silly, but I tried to read a Stephen King novel. The Green Mile. There's a particular harrowing scene that affected me very badly. At the time I'd seen the movie many times and thought I'd be ok with it. I was wrong... I had nightmares, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat... Everything reminded me of it.... I was in a semi permanent state of hypertension... Meditation and time helped heal that, but afterwards I found I couldn't listen to IM anymore... I was crushed as I loved them.

 

 

Thank you for sharing your story.

 

:hug2:

 

What you're saying doesn't sound weird at all and I will tell you why. I grew up in a family of Stephen King buffs and while I never really freaked out while watching the movies it was what happened afterwards that made me stop watching them forever. I'd have TERRIBLE nightmares, horrifying, vivid, scary nightmares immediately after watching them and then for days after. I've never had any movies affect me that way, usually if they are going to scare me, disturb me, or freak me out, they do so while they're being watched. I think he's jinxed. :)

 

I think maybe it's more that he's a little too good at what he does, LOL.

M parents both King fans, my husband as well. I started reading him, as well, and the guy seriously has a talent for getting into your head! After reading a novel, my perceptions of reality get thoroughly skewed! I have lost some sleep due to his books.. and there are a few I simply will not touch, just because of what my sweetie's told me!

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Back before I was a Rush fan I was into Iron Maiden. Then I went through something of a traumatic experience.. Least ways for me... I know this may sound silly, but I tried to read a Stephen King novel. The Green Mile. There's a particular harrowing scene that affected me very badly. At the time I'd seen the movie many times and thought I'd be ok with it. I was wrong... I had nightmares, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat... Everything reminded me of it.... I was in a semi permanent state of hypertension... Meditation and time helped heal that, but afterwards I found I couldn't listen to IM anymore... I was crushed as I loved them.

 

 

Thank you for sharing your story.

 

:hug2:

 

What you're saying doesn't sound weird at all and I will tell you why. I grew up in a family of Stephen King buffs and while I never really freaked out while watching the movies it was what happened afterwards that made me stop watching them forever. I'd have TERRIBLE nightmares, horrifying, vivid, scary nightmares immediately after watching them and then for days after. I've never had any movies affect me that way, usually if they are going to scare me, disturb me, or freak me out, they do so while they're being watched. I think he's jinxed. :)

 

I think maybe it's more that he's a little too good at what he does, LOL.

M parents both King fans, my husband as well. I started reading him, as well, and the guy seriously has a talent for getting into your head! After reading a novel, my perceptions of reality get thoroughly skewed! I have lost some sleep due to his books.. and there are a few I simply will not touch, just because of what my sweetie's told me!

 

I know what you mean by him being too good! And yeah, his writing does get into your head!!

 

I watched Salem's Lot for the very first time a few months ago. The first King movie in about 6 years!! I enjoyed it!! How things have changed!

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I think Rush provides a sort of escape, at least for me. Much like reading a book, the songs allow me to enter there mind of another and feel the emotions, the thoughts and experiences of someone else, someone existing or not; and it brings a sort of solace. Like being inside this separate mind serves as a sort of company, a feeling that you aren't alone. Sometimes, even just the sound of the instruments brings this rush, this paroxysm of emotion and it's wonderful. You experience sadness, happiness, anger, excitement all at the same time and feels as though you'll throw up from the swell in your stomach. I know when I was going through very severe depression; even though I felt so low and defeated; I could always escape into Rush, whether I was journeying to the Fountain of Lamneth, being pulled into a black hole, speeding around in a barchetta, stuck in a dystopian future, or just listening to the lessons that the other songs taught. I could just exist in my mind and not be bothered with the tumultuous life that twirled around me. I could leave my body, my life behind, I could be happy, I could forget how lonely I was. As long as I had Rush, it didn't matter what other people said or thought of me, I had only to care for those three beautiful men and the beautiful music they made. I don't know what it is that drew me to Rush, but as soon as I had a taste I was hooked. Rush served as a means of escaping the situation I was in. Still does. But I have such an incredible attachment to them, I look up to all of them like fathers; they helped me through the hardest time in my life and I still love them. I always will.
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Part 1 of ? (I don't know how many parts it will be)

 

It's difficult to know where to begin, other than just at the beginning. Rush has been a part of my conscious and subconscious mind for almost my whole life. I was introduced to them by my older brother Greg, sometime around 1979 or '80. He was my step-brother, actually, but he has always been a brother in every sense but that of blood, so I always just called him my brother. Anyway, I was about seven years old back then, and he was twelve or thirteen. In what I'm sure was a source of annoyance to him, I emulated him in so many different ways- the way he looked, his movements and mannerisms...I had the classic I-want-to-be-just-like-my-big-brother syndrome...

 

There was something about Rush's music, from the very start, that I can only say it affected me viscerally- that's a good word for what I felt. It just so deep, rhythms and riffs flying everywhere; it just lit me up. It was the most important discovery I had ever had, at that age. Permanent Waves was the 'new' Rush album at that time, and thanks to my brother, I had already had a lot of exposure to Fly By Night and 2112 in particular (and my first favorite Rush song was Xanadu, which captivated me from the first time Greg played it for me).

 

Neil Peart's playing was the primary reason that my brother became a drummer himself. The first (and only) kit I remember him having was a Slingerland, just like what Neil played back then. I have a vivid memory of watching him play along to the studio version of YYZ; it must have sometime around 1983 or '84, and he nailed every beat and every one of Neil's fills just right. I remember that moment being the very one that made me want to pick up the drumsticks as well, and within another year or so, I started playing as well. Taking up the drums had led my brother into marching band when he was in high school, and when I started playing, he showed me a couple of rudiments, but that was it. Other than that, I just played along with the records I liked at that time. I wasn't tackling Rush, though. Even today, all these years later, in a lot of cases I can only play a reasonable facsimile of what Neil does, but that's it. But I digress...

 

Fast forward to the summer of 1986- I was 13, and Greg was home after his freshman year of college. The afternoon of July 22nd was a typical hot summer day, nothing unusual about it...Greg was waiting for some friends to come pick him up and go to Cincinnati for a rock and roll show (it was not Rush). And there was something about it, when he left that day, going through my head, that something wasn't right; that something was going to happen to him. But I didn't let on. As I walked out the front steps before he got in his friend's car, I just said, "You'll be back tomorrow, right?" And he looked back and smiled, and said, "Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow."

 

The next morning, I was awakened by my sister, who was bawling. She said, "Mom's on the phone, and she needs to talk to you." And I'll never forget, I looked at the clock, and it was 8:07 AM. I thought to myself, OK, why the hell isn't Mom at home? And I got on the phone, and she said, "Greg was in a pretty serious accident last night, and he's in the hospital. You need to come down and say goodbye to him."

 

Thinking back on it, I don't remember exactly what my thoughts were, exactly. The story was that on the drive home, on a highway on-ramp, they swerved to avoid hitting an animal in the road and hit a pole. All of them had been drinking, and Greg was asleep in the back seat. The place where the car hit the pole is exactly where his head was, and that was it. But the accident was minor enough that nobody else was even scratched, and they got back up on the road and kept going, thinking he had actually slept through it. But then they found blood on the seat a couple of minutes later.

 

They told us Greg could live, but he would be in a permanent vegetative state- his brain stem had been severed. And my parents decided they didn't want that life for him, so the machines were turned off. A little after noon on July 23rd, 1986, my big brother, my biggest influence, and the one who had introduced me to the most important music I had ever known, was gone.

 

(More to come)...

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Part 2 of ?

 

 

My parents had encouraged me to hold Greg's hand and talk to him, in his hospital bed, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't speak, I couldn't even approach him. I had said goodbye to him in my mind, and that was enough.

 

In the first couple of hours after he died, I remember sitting with the rest of my family in total silence, and I found myself thinking about the music. The song Subdivisions came into my head- Greg was 15 years old in 1982, so he was the perfect audience for that song when it was released...it's odd to me that I was thinking about his life in relation to Rush music (or then again, maybe it's not odd at all)...I was also thinking about that day I watched him playing YYZ on the drums. And then I thought about the last time I had seen and spoken to him, less than 24 hours before. In those 24 hours since, he had lost his life, and mine was changed forever.

 

A year after he died, Hold Your Fire was released, and that was the first Rush album that I bought on my own- the first album of new Rush music that hadn't been handed down to me by my brother. And it took me awhile to recognize the first lyric that opens that album:

 

Tough times

Demand tough hearts

Demand tough talk

Demand tough songs- demand!

 

How was it that Neil knew exactly what I was going through, you know what I mean? HOW DID HE KNOW??

 

But the truth of the matter was that there was nothing tough about me when I was 14. I had begun drinking alcohol when I was twelve, and especially after Greg died, that started to become a problem- lots of time spent in my bedroom, with the door closed, just drinking and feeling sorry for myself, and escaping in the music (there was Rush, and then there were other bands, too). I don't associate Rush music with the depression and the grief I was going through at that time- if anything, it only helped to life my spirits a bit, which was not an easy task, back then.

 

The lyrics on the Presto album are full of inspiration- some of them, also represent cases when I can only figure that Neil had his crystal ball fixed firmly on me once again- and on things that I had yet to go through, as well. I'll get to that more, a little bit later. But the main lyric that I remember grabbing me first was from the title track- "If I could wave my magic wand, I'd make everything all right." It was as if my brother had guided Neil's pen, and Geddy's voice, directly at me. (I'm also an absolute sucker for Alex's acoustic playing, so the flourish of strumming at the opening of that song lit me up as well). And it was at about that time that I started to emerge, just a little tenuous bit, from the darkness. It wasn't a lot, but it was some kind of something like hope, which was not a feeling I'd had for the three years before then. It was enough to keep me going. Music was really the only solace I had. But I was still only sixteen, and I still had a lot of trials and troubles on the horizon- I had no idea how many, at that time. Because as I was just starting to emerge into the available light, my sister- my closest relative on Earth, my dearest friend, my soulmate- was receding further and further into the dark.

 

 

(Still more to come)...

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Since this thread began (thanks again to GJ for having the courage to even begin it), I have spent every day thinking about all of you and what you have written.

 

In both The Boys in Brazil and the little booklet that came with Rush In Rio, Neil said something that makes me think of all of you. He mentions how both themselves and their crew "prevailed against all obstacles."

 

Isn't that a lot like us? We could have, at any horrible moment in our lives, caved in and given up ... and worse. But, we didn't. For all of us, including myself, music saved us.

 

These are no idle words. It is a privilege to know all of you - each one - and to be here with you. You are all amazing. You even give me the strength to go on even though my future looks bleak. Thank you!

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Part 3 of ?

 

My sister Alex was sexually abused by a relative of ours, starting when she was nine- but she's also the most brilliant person I've ever known. She graduated high school at sixteen, full scholarship to a private university...but she also didn't believe that her life was worthy of anything whatsoever. She had her own set of problems that were specific to her when our brother died- she had some feelings for him that went rather beyond what a sister is "supposed" to feel for a brother, if you understand what I mean (he was actually our stepbrother, remember)...she was filled with shame and self-loathing about that and some other things too, that probably will never be explained. She started cutting when she was about fifteen. Drinking and drugging didn't help her any, either, and when she was nineteen, and a junior in college, she was raped. She was three years older than I was, which puts that right in the same time frame I've led up to in my own story here. She had attempted suicide a couple of times after that, and failed out of school. I didn't find out about the rape until about six months later, and I had no idea how far down she had gone until one night that was just the two of us talking, and ended with me forcibly taking a knife away from her. The Pass, another song from Presto, came to frankly freak the sh*t out of me. To this day, it still shakes me to the core; it's really emotional for me (but not in a scary way, anymore- it became comforting at some point, and has stayed that way). I helped my sister as much as I could, with the emotional equipment I had at the time, which was not a lot. But she did end up living through that time- she was diagnosed manic depressive, and began medication for it.

 

The first time I had the opportunity to see Rush live was on the tour for Presto- March 6th, 1990, in Cincinnati. I was not quite 17 years old, and I can remember how excited I was to finally go to a show by this band that had meant so much to me for the ten years or so that I'd been listening to them (and it was on a school night, too, so I really felt like I was getting away with something huge! Haha). That morning after my shower, I went to my bedroom to get dressed, and was thinking about nothing other than what I had coming up that night...and I had a spiritual experience right then. I'll put my hand on any book you want and swear to what happened. Freewill was the song going through my head at that moment ("You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice"), and I opened my bedroom door, and there was Greg, standing right in front of me- I saw him there, as sure as life, just for a split second- and then he was gone. But it was enough to let me know that he was literally with me in spirit that night, when I went to the show. And the show itself was just magical. I can't think of any other word to describe it.

 

I would go to see Rush anytime I had the opportunity to do so, over the next couple of tours after that, too. But in the mid '90s, my alcoholism had become a ruling force in my life, and by that time, I had fallen in with a crowd of people who were pretty far removed from the Rush scene, as it were. By the time I finally got sober in 1998 (I say "finally"- I was not yet 25 years old), my whole life was a mess- I was near death inside. And the thing about Rush, and how they DO relate to that time, is the fact that I had always been inspired by them- and I had completely forgotten about the inspiration. Or I had ignored it. Rush music had always lifted me out of sadness and turmoil, at least to a degree. But at that time, I was awash in all of my own problems, and they were all problems that I created...but I've never associated Rush music with drinking and drugging; they've always been healthier for me than all of that.

 

The second half of the '90s and almost all of the 2000s were virtually Rush-free, for me. They just weren't on my radar at all. I was still as much into music as I had always been, but I was spending all my time on other bands then. When I was almost two years sober, I married the woman who had been my girlfriend on and off since we were 18. We've had two children together, and my life was pretty much devoted to our new family.

 

But Rush would come Rushing back, due to the most unexpected circumstances.

 

(Still more to come)...

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Hugs to everybody!!!

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Yayyyy,I am back,everyone!!!!!

http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/word/hello-wave-smiley-emoticon.gif

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