FOR YOU: For You ~ Just For Me

I believe that what is most important about a song is what it means to you... how it speaks to your soul... so much more so than what it is that the songwriter was thinking at the time that he penned it. I've been hesitant to share with you what For You means to me because it is so personal... but that is part of what makes it so special. It was 1978... I was just 18... a time in life when a girl should be thinking of her future... and the wonders that life could bring... but I was thinking of how I could get away from life... imagining where I could run to... to get away from the foulness of the this world. I had been so abused and beaten down... that my Chelsea had suicide (with no apparent motive). No apparent motive that is to those who weren't looking hard enough to see me. I was lost and alone... and after running from an abusive father I found that my life was about to end at the hands of a killer who luckily had a sudden change of heart and decided that he would let my friend and me live if we vowed our silence... we assured him that we wouldn't "tell" anyone. I broke that promise and became the sole witness testifying of his torture... in front of the jury... I looked into his face as I described how he had tied nooses around our necks so that if we tried to escape the ropes would tighten and choke us... of how he bragged throughout the night about the women he'd killed and scattered throughout the Nevada dessert... and of course of what he promised to do to us. He was indeed found guilty and sentence to 99 years... 3 counts x2... life in prison. I got many pats on the back that day... I had stopped a killer! At least momentarily... because that night after losing a game of chess to his cell mate (a young man who was in on a burglary charge) he got angry and killed him with his bare hands. Just a 20 year old kid in the wrong cell... at the wrong time... the murder was followed by a death sentence... and it didn't end there as he was able to get a hold of guns and took the prison hostage resulting in the death of 2 more inmates. He is still on death row... 30-some years later. But it wasn't HIS prison that I was living in... it was my own. I had been locked in a cell with fear... and imagined that ALL men were cruel... (which many have since proven to be...) but my soul longed for "true" love none the less... I can remember feeling so alone... it felt like no one understood. Broken and scared (and scarred) I was on my own... "Your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds... remember how I kept you waiting..." I don't think it was the waiting that was so hard on her... as it was the world and facing it alone. You truly do "have to learn to live with what you can't rise above." Yet, the man in this song somehow finds her... broken on the beach... he pours salt on her tongue... salt represents flavor... but it also represents the savior... the salt of the earth... her own personal Jesus... who came to the earth for her. By using salt her savior gives her back a thirst for life with the hope of salvation... she feels redemption in his love... but he doesn't get too close because he knows that she is injured and he doesn't want to make her run away again... (In her dream) he is a kind and gentle man... determined to protect her... which helps her to trust him... so she allows him close enough to put salt on her tongue... he gives her the flavor and then hangs just out of reach... making her "act" on her desires again. "Pull yourself up." his actions echo. "You were born with the power of a locomotive..." But that damn medal... that pride always gets in the way... but it was that very same medal... the pride in her strength (that was devastating) that gave her strength... then she finally realizes that there really never was any better reason than the one they were living for... and he's still there... much to her surprise... when everyone else had walked away and left her broken on the beach... her savior found her... I think the ironic part is when she finds that it was the man she ran from... the one she left behind due to her fear... not only the fear that he would hurt her but that she would hurt him... and bring him down... ruin his future... but he was the kind man she sought... that would have shown her the love that she so needed. What she didn't realize is that she was and is what he came for... he needed her as much as she needed him... and he was hurt too but he's not going to burden her with his pain nor ask her to lick his boo boo... cause it's about her... he's here for her. I'm not sure if he ever left... or if his heart waited for her... if he kept searching for her after she went to find a "better reason" than them... but even if he did leave for a time... he came back... with salt... and not for her beauty... or the sexy way (that she's stretched out on the floor). His motivation transcends the physical... he didn't come for her body... but for her soul... for the very essence of their being. FOR YOU became my "True Love Song"... the one that I could and would escape to... when I needed to believe that LOVE is real and that true love will not leave you nor forsake you... but it will find you when you are at your weakest it will not only give you back a thirst for life... it will remind you that you were born with the power of a locomotive... now get up and be devastatingly strong... for us.