When You Make The Choice To Believe In Your Existence

I love music.  I always have.  One of my great regrets in life is that I never learned to read sheet music and play an instrument.  When I was young I was in choir in school and I loved it.  The tragic irony in that is that right up to the moment my balls dropped and I began to go through puberty I sang Alto.  I was the only boy in the choir (and in the mass choir at state competitions) to sing Alto while all the other boys sang tenor.

When puberty struck I fairly quickly went from singing alto to singing baritone.  After my voice settled into it’s new depth, I found that my range was very limited and while I can sing fairly well in this octave up here, and that octave down there, the one there in the middle is not something I’m good at.  And naturally that one in the middle is the one where most songs exist.  I miss being able to sing well enough to allow people to hear me and one of these days I’m going to take some voice lessons and correct this problem.  In the meantime, I sing when I’m in the shower, and when I’m alone in the car.

Yes, I love music and I listen to it constantly.  I listen to music in the car.  I listen to music eight hours a day at work.  I listen to music when I’m cooking dinner or doing housework, and I listen to music while I’m drifting off to sleep at night.  The magic iProducts by Apple are among the greatest inventions of all time.

There are 3258 songs on my iPhone, and nearly 1000 more on my computer hard drive via iTunes.  My tastes are very eclectic and you’ll find anything from modern, contemporary rock to classical music and show tunes in my collection.  I’ve got a library of country music, a plethora of pop, a big batch of motion picture soundtracks and even a smattering of R&B and urban music.  I have occasionally wished that I was one of those people who are moved by and emotional about every single song they ever hear, EVER! I’m not. Most of the time, I like music for its rhythm, its catchiness and its singability.

Every once in a while, though, I am caught by surprise when a song actually catches my attention for more reasons than those.  Sometimes a song actually does speak to me and when it does, I like to pay attention to what it has to say. Today, there is a song that is speaking to me on a soulular level and I’ve been listening to it on an endless loop for a couple hours now.

“When You Find The One”

By. Melissa Etheridge

I was a slick Midwestern gal
On a long hard road into southern cal.
Didn’t find any crime fillin’ up all my time
I had the devil in my bones and an angel on my mind.

And I drank up all the movies and I searched for happy endings.
I turned love inside out till I was perfectly pretending.
Still I believed it could be true.

When you find the one
There’s no question in the silence.
All is said and done when you find the one.
When you find the one.

You could say that I was crazy I was that kinda girl
I had to open up a lot of oysters before I found myself a pearl
I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find my grass was green enough
Had to be face down in the gutter to see what is and isn’t love

Then I woke from all the dreaming to your taste and to your laughter
I cried till I was dry and now I live my ever after
I believed I always knew

When you find the one
There’s no question in the silence
All is said and done when you find the one

And when you make the choice to believe in your existence
With hello you will know when you find the one

I believe it could be true
Yes I believe I always knew
And I believe it could be true
And believe I always knew

When you find the one
There’s no question in the silence
All is said and done when you find the one

And when you make the choice to believe in your existence
With hello you will know when you find the one

With hello you will know

“And when you make the choice to believe in your existence.”  Maybe it’s just me but this seems an incredibly powerful line and not just because I’m gay and still struggle to be OK with it, but because it’s so true for anyone who struggles with anything about which they tend to feel judged.

This song is, of course specifically about finding the love of our life, which I know first hand is very difficult when you can’t even accept the package that love is bound to be wrapped up in.  Not that I wouldn’t like to find the love of my life, but until I fully “make the choice to believe in [my] existence” that’s going to be hard to do.

Anyway, today, at least for a minute, I’m moved by and emotional about this song.  And it’s good.