| Doing
some research for a potential website, I came across this video that
I used to love (and still do) and it reminded me of something that I
need to say.
In 1985, when I
first heard "Endlessly" from Joe Lynn Turner's debut
album, "Rescue You" I was at a crossroads. A crossroad of
age and changing priorities.
I was dating a
girl whom I really thought I loved, as much as I knew about
"love" at the time. A girl whom I planned to marry
someday. But she wasn't really what fate had planned for me. I was at a time in my life when I started looking back.
Looking back at my
life, wondering what it all really meant. Looking back at what I had
been searching for. Looking back at all the violence, hurt, and pain
I inflicted in,
and on, my life and trying to balance it with the love I needed and
felt in my heart. Think of combining the songs, "Born to be
Wild" and "Endlessly."
I tried to drown
the conflict those two emotions with alcohol, sex, drugs, and living like I had nine lives...or even like I was invincible. I
hid the things I felt in my heart with anger and that anger caused
me to literally risk my life many times and to chase off those who might have
wanted to understand or to love me. Pushing the envelope. Ripping
the envelope to shreds. Throwing caution to the
wind. Playing Russian roulette with my life, my heart, and my
present and future. Always fighting one war or another, real or
imagined.
Now, I'm certainly
not bragging or talking about something as trivial as
jaywalking. I went places and did things that I had no business
coming out of alive. I've been shot at, I've been stabbed in a
bar fight, and had it not been for friends stopping me, I would have
killed a man in a fight for reasons that make no sense now. All
because I used anger to mask the "softer" side of my
soul that I thought was weak. I let that anger out in destructive
ways.
Now, I apologize to those who I did, and might have,
hurt in the past. Know that it wasn't you. It was me. To those who hurt me, know
that I forgive you. Again, it was me.
Those things I
did because there was no place to release the love in my
heart, no real soul mate for me. No one to quiet the anger.
Until four years
later, in 1989, when I met the one person in this existence that
could quiet the anger. My wife Trish. A woman who had her own
problems, hurts, and past. Yet she saw something in me that no one
else ever has. And nurtured it. Loved it. And brought it to the
surface.
Darling, on our
18th anniversary, this is
my continuing declaration to the world that I will love
you...endlessly. Now, I'm just an old man whose body has aged,
whose reflexes have slowed and whose eyes have dimmed but my heart
is still young. Because of you.
You took that heart
and gave me my life back. You know my past. You know my faults and
yet you see the good in me because you see my heart.
Thank you for
rescuing me. As the song says, "You're everything I'm dreaming
of." And I
do dream of you and I love you. Forever and a day.
Happy anniversary,
darling. From the soft side of me...and here is our song, from my
very soft side. Do you remember? Can we ever forget.... |
