blondieenyc

Yes, that’s right.  Michael Jackson inspired the first phrase that would ever escape my mouth.  Plus with a dad for a disc jockey and an uncle who was almost signed to Sony, you could say I’ve hungered for music all of my life.  Now I’ve received the chance to create something for me.  It doesn’t matter if it will ever be heard, but it will exist and that is more than enough happiness for me.

Blank.

       I can’t completely recall the date, but it was some time earlier this year.  I’d been through a lot and music had been my only source of true therapy.  This is the first time I’ve ever written this for all to see.  It began with the separation of my parents.  All of my life my mother had psychological problems where bulimia and thoughts of suicide were present.  She was even at one point put in to an institute.  I always knew my parents jointly had problems as well.  About five years ago, we found out my mother was meeting different men and it turned out that it didn’t stop there.  She had been cheating on my father for years and when it was all put out there for me to see, I couldn’t control myself.  I shouldn’t leave out the fact that my father wasn’t so innocent.  Although he never went behind my mother’s back for love, he ignored her in ways that triggered her to deem herself a waste in the family.  Then there is my brother and I and the way we treated her.  I always think to myself: if I had been just a bit more respectful and loving, she wouldn’t have walked out on us.  Well, on that fateful night last December, the seemingly happy world I had once known suddenly vanished from my eyes.  Overnight I knew things would never remain the same.  I had to nurse my 46-year-old father back to life.  I had to fill in as mom for the moment for my brother.  Yes, I may have been 20-years-old, but I was (and still am not) in any position ready for that type of commitment.  But when things fall apart in your family, you have to find that inner strength to hold the people you love up and from crumbling again.  For a side of information, things have fallen in to place.  My father has found a woman who he loves and my mother, although living in Connecticut, feels closer to me than ever.  But back then I’d never imagined getting through all of that without music.

         Then there were the deaths of my two close friends within a year from each other.  Joe passed away from a heart problem when he was 19 and Brian left our world at the age of 21 from surgery.  Plus it doesn’t hurt to mention that a friend of mine’s brother died fighting for our country in Iraq a few months after that.  To say the least, you could say music saved my soul from an even deeper depression.  Sure there could be hundreds of dollars wasted on talking to doctor so and so, but the words of Eddie Vedder and Annie Lennox soothed me much more.  Nothing against anyone who goes to therapists or psychologists, but music has really been the only thing that has never judged me.

            That musical therapy (that I owe a great deal to) opened up even more when I awoke to my door bell one sunny spring day.  I had been watching re-runs of “Beverly Hills 90210” and found myself gathering the strength to rise and turn the knob.  There in Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, a hip black leather jacket, designer jeans, and spiky brown hair with auburn tips was my gay boyfriend, Paul Orbello.  If anyone knew better what I’d been going through, it was Paul.  Along with his much needed company, he also brought some type of surprise for me.  I repeatedly asked him what it was, but all he said was, “Get a CD player.” Instead of the CD player, we opted for the computer that stood so perfectly silent between my dining room and living room.

            “This is something you’ve wanted for a long time,” he said to me.  He handed me a disc with nothing written on it.  I placed it gently inside the CD drive.  If there is a sound that sounded more perfectly than this one, I beg of someone to show me it.  There were no words.  A simple guitar that strung magically into violins and I knew what was created.  It was created for me.  A song that had no lyrics, but had my name written all over it.  “This is for you,” he said. “I worked on this with Johnny [one of his producer friends] and I knew you could come up with something for it.  It’s yours.” Someone had that much belief in me that I could create another factor into this already brilliantly produced track.  It didn’t matter if it was Bono sitting across from me that moment.  Just knowing that someone, anyone had me in my mind to write.  Writing especially for music.

            But let’s stop for a moment.  I should also tell you my passion for writing lyrics.  It began when I was around eleven.  Another source of therapy you might say.  I’ve always had a lot of confidence in writing them—I just never had a sound that went along with it.  However, here at this very moment was a song playing that was meant for my writing.  Within seconds of the song ending, I busted out a pen and paper—after hugging Paul of course.

            That pen connected every thought possessing my body onto an 8″ x 11″ piece of paper. Within minutes I had three verses and two bridges accompanied by a chorus. He read them.  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “This is why this song was made.” Those words meant more than anything anyone has ever expressed to me in my life.  Well, here is something I’ve never done before.  I’m about to show you what I wrote.

“The Real Me.”

So this is what yours truly ended up naming her song.  Below is the exact way I wrote it sans the horrific penmanship.  Instead it’s brought to you via Microsoft Word—oh the little technologic wonders in life.

(11 Seconds in – Verse 1)  The tears in my eyes / A reflection of truth / Because I knew that it was

over / Over with you

Bridge 1 And I couldn’t hide / Inside a masquerade / You were something / Something incomplete

Chorus And I can’t believe / That it happened so fast / And I can’t believe / That someone like you / Was in my past / You were nothing / In a time where I had everything / And I’ll never fall / Like that again

Never again (2x), Like that again, Never again (2x)

Verse 2 It was the day / When I took control of my life / You took advantage / Of something I never had

Bridge 2 And I couldn’t lie / To myself anymore / Couldn’t see me / With a nowhere man / And

now…

Repeat Chorus

Guitar riff (20-25 seconds)

Verse 3 And now I’m content without you / And now I thank god / That I don’t see you / But I want to thank you / For making me see / The real me.

            There it is.  Right before my eyes for all to read.  It was pretty simple with the idea behind the creation.  Bear with me for I feel the need to take a few extra sentences out about the person behind those words.  It was May 2003.  His name was Mike, 21-years-old at the time, and I was 17.  We met on a train (oh, so very romantic) where he felt the need to serenade me in front of our groups of friends.  Song of choice? “Beautiful” by Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell.  I should have known—what a cliché.  Ugh, just re-reading that pains me for I am not the girl to get so mushy over things.  Usually, I’d turn away from this type of guy, but unfortunately there was an attraction.  Again, I should have known but you never really do when something is bad for you.  We dated for a year-and-a-half and what I went through at such a naïve age was something I’d never expect upon our first meeting.  When you’re in denial that the person you THINK you love (first person ever for that matter) cheats on you and demeans the person you are, it’s hard to walk away.  They know what buttons to push and what things to say to keep you coming down and coming back.  Never in my life would I have thought to be in such a position.  I’m strong and independent and back then I was helpless, innocent, and addicted. 

But that addiction finally came to a close one day when enough was enough.  Who was he anyway? He didn’t have a steady job, he was a drop-out, had a problem with dealing and doing massive amounts of drugs, and dressed like a gangster wannabe.  Sorry, but there was no “inner” Scarface.  Of course I say this now, when I should have realized it then. Here I was four years later finally laying it to rest.  I’d written things about him for quite some time, but I knew after I put that pen down that it was what I’d wanted to say to him all along.  It didn’t matter if he’d ever read this, but it was a release for me.  The incompleteness that was always attached to Mike seemed to disappear.  Instead—all of the bad times that once existed transformed into completion.  I had never felt more complete or satisfied than the time specified.  Since then I’ve thought of him less and less.  At least I can say he served some purpose for me.  For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted a song of my own and I now have Mike to thank.  And of course Paul who gave me the opportunity to develop something lyrically on my own terms.

            My own terms with music.  Reading that instantly forms a smile on my face.  Not only was I able to transition a negative into a positive, but for the first time in my life, I had a completed song.  What once lie sprawled out in front of me were scrambled pieces of paper with blue, red, and black pen marks.  Difference now was a CD accompanying that scenario.  Perhaps the most gratifying part of this experience has to do with my iPod.  As I uploaded the track onto my computer, opened iTunes, and clicked away with my mouse, in minutes I had “The Real Me” under song title and “Chantal Lauren” under artist.  Grabbing that line and entering it to my iPod along greats such as The Beatles and Rolling Stones made me feel, well, sort of important.  I never had the courage or chance to ever really make a song on my own. 

Although those favorite bands of mine may never know I exist, we now had one thing in common: we wrote our own music.  Could this be what I was destined for? It’s a long shot in the music world, but I’ve always believed in the phrase “Never say never.” How could it possibly not be when it was the first time I’d ever felt very proud of myself.  Hey, I may never make it in this music world, but I can now say I’ve dabbled in it.  It was there where I found, well, the real me.

…And break.