Have you ever been driving down a highway, listening to an old classic rock song and singing along with the lyrics that you heard over and over again when the song was popular in your youth and now seem permanently ingrained into your subconscious.
You’re driving down the road, singing along, and all of a sudden . . .
WHAM!!!
It’s not an oncoming car, or a deer materializing from nowhere to run out of the ditch.
It’s that lyric . . . just one line in a song. And it speaks to you in a way it’s never spoken before.
And then, the next thing you know, you’re a blubbering mess trying to keep it together, keep your eyes on the road, and you’re STILL singing that song. (You might also be a real masochist like I am and REPLAY the song after it’s done, just to make sure that was really you that had a sudden emotional breakdown. I did it THREE times.)
When I was growing up, one of the classic rock bands I enjoyed was Kansas. Like most everybody else during that time, I was quick to grab a copy of their “Leftoverture” album as the first single from the album, “Carry On My Wayward Son” was helping the band make a name for itself.
But THAT’S not the song that got me . . . it was the song that followed the hit single on the album, “The Wall.”
The album was actually released about six months after my attack, and yet it seems the song was written with my experience in mind.
I’ve listened to this song thousands of times over the years. In fact, I pretty much played the grooves off of Side A of that album. I loved “What’s On My Mind” and really got into “Miracles Out Of Nowhere” – a song title that, appropriately enough, describes where this sudden emotional outburst came from.
But it was the first lines of “The Wall” that had me in a sudden state of emotional upheaval:
“I’m woven in a fantasy, I can’t believe the things I see
The path that I have chosen now has led me to a wall
And with each passing day I feel a little more like something dear was lost
It rises now before me, a dark and silent barrier between
All I am and all that I would ever want to be
It’s just a travesty, towering, marking off the boundaries
My spirit would erase”
As I sang along to those lyrics, I suddenly felt as if I was singing about the walls that were forced upon me when I was sexually assaulted as a 9-year-old boy in small-town Nebraska in 1976.
I didn’t actively choose what happened to me, nor was there anything I could do to stop the attack. And yet, there is the unrelenting belief that there was something – anything – I could have done to stop it. And, because I couldn’t, I felt, for many years, that i grew up a shattered version of what I could have been, that wall of darkness standing in front of me.
That wall was erected the night I was attacked. It was a wall that stood between me and my childhood. It was a wall that made me feel unworthy and unattractive. It was a wall that kept me from feeling good about who I was and what I was capable of doing in my life.
There was so much good in my life, from personal and professional success to the network of friends and loved ones who always were there. And yet, I stood still, the wall preventing a move forward to what could very well have been something even bigger and better. It’s still there, but few have the courage to step over that wall and step forward to an amazing opportunity. It’s a sense of courage that, only now, I’m beginning to understand.
For many years, that wall that was built around me, stopping me from realizing the value that I have and the gifts that I have that can be shared with those who share in my experience as a survivor of sexual assault. I always told my daughter that she was “capable of great things” – but why couldn’t I take my own advice? What would it take to tear down that wall?
The last part of the lyric really speaks to where I’m at today:
“And though it’s always been with me
I must tear down the wall and let it be
All I am, and all that I was ever meant to be, in harmony
Shining true and smiling back at all who wait to cross
There is no loss”
In discussing the lyrics he wrote, founding member and guitarist Kerry Livgren said this in his book, “Seeds of Change”:
“Looking back, I regard the lyrics to “The Pinnacle” and “The Wall” as the best I have written.  Somehow the wall was in me, and I did not have the power to remove this barrier to the depths of joy and harmony I so desperately sought.”
There IS opportunity and peace, joy and harmony on the other side of that wall that we, as survivors of sexual assault, can enjoy – if only we summon the courage to break down those walls that our experience has put up for us. With each sunrise, I’m seeing a new light and a new experience that I never saw as a VICTIM of sexual assault. The journey is a long one and there are walls we must face in order to reach that destination – but I can tell you that, without a doubt, the goal is worth the journey.