So the Girl Can Love Herself

My mind is driven by associations, and in that regard I feel extraordinarily lucky to have a deep reservoir of memories. And I don’t mean memories from my life, but rather memories of things I’ve read, or lyrics that I’ve heard. Seemingly a thousand little nuggets of interests have bookmarked themselves for future use, because the majority of the time it will be something that hasn’t crossed my mind in decades, but something I notice will trigger it , where it will pop into view in an instant. This particular occurrence happened at the sight of a young girl walking into a restaurant. Once an association or two are brought online, a type of pyrotechnic show unleashes itself in my head and from there it simply has to be dealt with. Most of this journal, in fact, is the result of these types of association storms. They will ricochet around in my mind with a near manic urgency until I’m able to organize them all and put it down on paper, so to speak.

It is in that framing that I want to share a recent example that feels uniquely special. The setup here involves two prior “bookmarked” memories, two lyrics from two completely different songs that my internal pattern recognition software captured and stitched together into a wonderful little tapestry right before my eyes. And that is where I thought the story ended, but then a new piece to the puzzle recently unfolded and found its way into the frame and actually completed and complimented the other two.

The first piece to this little puzzle occurred well over a decade ago while jogging. I enjoy listening to music while I run, just to keep myself company, and on that particular day I happened to hear “Jane Says”, by the band, Jane’s Addiction. Roughly speaking, the song is about an emotionally broken young woman full of disfunction, and during this long rambling song, a single lyric stood out and seared itself into memory.

Jane says, “I ain’t never been in love”
No, she don’t know what it is
She only knows if someone wants her

The lyric stunned my mind to silence. I didn’t even listen to the rest of the songs on my playlist because I was locked into contemplating the emotional mindscape she inhabited for the rest of my run. The first thought that struck me was how in the hell could I relate to it? Shit, it’s my own tribe that only saw her only as an object to use. Testosterone rules the young male mind, so we all stand convicted. As an older man now, who was once a younger man, I have to admit my own culpability to Jane’s plight. Although I was considered one of the ‘good guys’, as they say, hormones are still hormones, and I cannot dodge that. The verse is just another example that words have the power to draw blood.

So, file that away. It was an uncomfortable truth to consider, but now that memory is stashed far away in memory, presumably to collect dust as a one-off tripwire of self-examination. But then I heard another song several years later that brought “Jane” right back up to the present and established the second piece to this trifecta of associations.

This one came while listening to a ‘Black Keys’ song titled “Next Girl”, and once I heard this verse, “Jane” immediately sprang to mind. It was if she heard the line herself, echoing down the tangled labyrinth of my memories and shouted, “that’s it…..that’s me!”, because it seemed to provide the answer to her disfunction, as well as a back-handed rebuke to the men who stand guilty as charged.

I wanted love
but not for myself
But for the girl
So she could love herself

The unmentioned precept there is our man’s recognition that she was emotionally cracked, if not already broken, and needed self-love before anything else. His awareness to it is right there in the verse, a beautifully wounded girl who just needs to be loved and an attempt made to make right the wrongs done to her. The song doesn’t give us a conclusion, only a conviction that we all need to look deeper into the people that come into our orbits.

Hearing that verse created a wonderful association between the two memories and I thought about it off and on for days, but again, that is where I thought the storyline ended. Problem and solution met up and hugged, then were both filed away and out of mind…. that is until a recent trip to a nearby restaurant brought it all back into the light.

I was having a drink with my friend after work and while talking about our normal interests, I noticed a young girl walk in. She was about eight or nine years of age, thin, with long blonde hair. What made her stand out was that she walked in with a distinct air of assertiveness, with her parents comfortably following several steps behind.

As I watched on with a deepening interest, this young girl walked up to the Hostess and explained, evidently, the sitting arrangement that her family wanted, because the Hostess grabbed menus and silverware and led the young lady to their table…. with her parents walking dutifully behind. It was obvious this was not her first rodeo.

And that is when the fireworks began. The two previous memories jumped back into clear view like school children frantically raising their hands in class hoping teacher will call on one or the other first. What I had just witnessed was the true answer to Jane’s disfunction; parents who thoughtfully instilled confidence and self-ownership into their daughter from the ground up, burned into her neuro network at an early age. And it was a beautiful thing to see.

There are no guarantees, of course, but the confidence I saw as that young girl strode to their table, with proud parents in toll was a glorious moment of parenting and together with those two framing verses, created something of a trifecta of meaning for me…. and one that simply deserves to be shared.