The Truth Is ...

by Melissa Etheridge

  I was very clear in wanting this song to send a political message out there too. My son was just about to be born, and I could not imagine the pain of a mother losing a son like that. “This was our brother, this was our son. This shepherd young mild, this unassuming one.”

  We all gasped when we heard this story. I think that it really hit us square in the face because, as a nation, we say, “This can’t happen here, we’re all much too civilized.” But it can and it does—every day.

  “Where can these monsters hide?” I just wanted to shout out to the world: How could you not see this? We breed this. “They are knocking on our front door, they’re rocking in our cradles, they’re preaching in our churches and eating at our tables.” We see them every day, these people who have so much fear of sexuality. They must have been brutalized themselves as children in such a dark way. But my heart told me that these two young boys who did this to Mathew are not themselves monsters. These are kids who go to school in Colorado and Wyoming and Idaho, and Anywhere You Live, USA. They’re our children. These are not somebody else’s children. They’re ours. I’m not talking of only Mathew Shepard, either. These young misguided boys who killed him are also someone’s children.

  With that understanding, I wanted to try and comprehend forgiveness. I can’t grasp that kind of pain, overwhelming grief, fear for life, and disbelief. I know the darkness and shame. Somewhere along the way, these kids became disaffected, dislocated, and deviant. They must lubricate their reasons to hate. They learn it and fester it and continue this dreadful cycle.

  I tried to insert myself into the message so that maybe I could teach tolerance and understanding and acceptance and love for one another. The more people try to come at me from this place of hate, the more I want to reach out and say, “I love you.” I wrote: “Those who would pollute me, I love you; destroy and persecute me, I love you. Desecrate and hate me, I love you.” How can I break the chain?

  I searched my heart and my soul. In my mind, I tried to find forgiveness. It would be a big step for our world to be able to say the only way to break it, the only way to understand that kind of evil is to stop punishing the offenders, and treat them. I can forgive. I can comprehend—I don’t say understand. But I will not forget. We cannot forget. We as a nation cannot just say, “Oh, wasn’t that bad,” and push the archaic persecution of homosexuality—of sexuality—aside.

  In the most stunning act of benevolence I have ever heard of, Mathew’s parents brokered a deal for one of his killers to serve two life sentences just as the jury was to begin hearing testimony about whether he should be put to death. In essence, the Shepards spared the life of the man who stole their son’s life. That is a testament to true human spirit.

  In memory of Mathew Shepard, may we forgive but never forget.

  SCARECROW

  Showers of your crimson blood

  Seep into a nation calling up a flood

  Of narrow minds who legislate

  Thinly veiled intolerance

  Bigotry and hate

  But they tortured and burned you

  They beat you and they tied you

  They left you cold and breathing

  For love they crucified you

  I can’t forget hard as I try

  This silhouette against the sky

  Scarecrow crying

  Waiting to die wondering why

  Scarecrow trying

  Angels will hold carry your soul away

  This was our brother

  This was our son

  This shepherd young and mild

  This unassuming one

  We all gasp this can’t happen here

  We’re all much too civilized

  Where can these monsters hide?

  But they are knocking on our front door

  They’re rocking in our cradles

  They’re preaching in our churches

  And eating at our tables

  I search my soul

  My heart and in my mind

  To try and find forgiveness

  This is someone’s child

  With pain unreconciled

  Filled up with father’s hate

  Mother’s neglect

  I can forgive

  But I will not forget

  Scarecrow crying

  Waiting to die wondering why

  Scarecrow trying

  Rising above all in the name of love

  Our son Beckett was born on November eighteenth, 1998. We called it thirty-six hours of labor. As with Bailey, Julie had gone into labor but she was not dilating. This time around, we had decided to have a hospital birth from the git-go. We chose a hospital closer to our new home. When she went into labor, Julie wasn’t in as much pain as she was with Bailey. Again, the baby was putting pressure on Julie’s spine, so when labor started, the doctors gave her a mild epidural. Julie was very clear that she intended to walk out of that hospital immediately after giving birth, so they didn’t give her too many drugs. I actually helped Beckett come out during the delivery. I was helping to push up Julie’s legs when she pushed him out, so I was right there when he was born. Both times, I cut the umbilical cord. I was right there. Beckett made a lot more noise than Bailey did when she was born.

  Thankfully, our pediatrician was available to check out Beckett right after Julie gave birth. Beckett was born at ten-thirty in the morning, and Julie was on her way home by one-thirty in the afternoon. The nurses were great at this hospital. They told Julie that she could leave as soon as she ate, went to the bathroom, and had the doctor examine Beckett. The baby was fine, and he started breast-feeding right away. With that, Julie got up, went to the bathroom, ate, looked at me, and said, “Okay, let’s go home.”

  Beckett

  Angel as a puppy on the road

  Grandma Etheridge holding Bailey and Beckett

  Bailey and me

  Having a son was a completely different experience from having Bailey. I believe that children are born exactly who they are—that their personalities are intact at the moment of birth. And this little personality was completely different from Bailey. He was a boy, with all that out-there boy energy. This second child added a sense of completion to our little family. There were parents. There were siblings. We looked almost normal.

  Except for Julie’s and my deteriorating relationship. Once again, we were down that post-birth path of “Give me time. Give me space.” It felt like it had before Julie got pregnant with Beckett. But there wouldn’t be any more pregnancies to distract us now. Julie and I had to come head-to-head and really deal with our relationship, with our problems.

  Because it always seemed that there was friction between us, Julie would get on my case about my weight, or how I dressed or that I wasn’t helping out enough around the house. It was always something. I would try dressing a little sexier. I tried to do chores around the house. Nothing seemed to be working. No matter what I did, it was never enough.

  So I went back into my “basement,” I went into the studio to record Breakdown.

  Breakdown

  • • •

  AFTER I had written all the songs for Breakdown, Julie listened to them. She heard where I was coming from, what was going on in my head, and what I was creating musically. She came to me and said, “Well, it sure sounds like you’re in a lot of pain and that I’m just this horrible person. It just sounds like there’s so much going on. I dare you to write a love song.” Never one to back down from a dare, I wrote the song “Sleep.”

  I have written many songs I am very very proud of, but I think that “Sleep” may be the most perfect song I have ever written. It’s so sharp and small in scope. The first verse is about love and sex. The second verse is about building a home and moving into family life. And the third verse is about death. It’s simple, poignant, and direct. A lot of my songs are shielded in metaphors and veils. I guess that’s always been a safe way for me to reveal myself without feeling too exposed or vulnerable.

  SLEEP
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  After your laughter like thunder

  After your skin like coffee and cream

  After it takes our bodies into the night

  After we’ve come to the extreme

  I want to lay down on your shoulder

  Just inside your arm

  I want to listen to your heart beat

  And your breathing on and on

  I want to lay down on your shoulder

  Surrender to your peace

  And go to sleep

  And when we’ve gone a million miles

  Made true our dreams with sweat and bone

  After we’ve built it up with our bare hands

  Made strong a place we can call home

  And when the light in my eye is fading

  When running water becomes too deep

  Finally angels turn my fire to dust

  And when my soul’s no longer mine to keep

  But as I kept working on the album, refining it to the point where I wanted it to be, it was getting harder and harder at home. This was supposed to be the time of my life. I had made it as a rock star. I had a big house, a fancy sports car, and a relationship that was a lot of work. I guess I expected all of that to fill the big, dark, empty black hole in my heart. I thought that Julie was supposed to make me feel safe. Every time I tried to communicate that, it didn’t work. I thought that when I became a famous rock star, all of my problems would fade away. That’s why I wanted to be famous in the first place: to solve my problems. I thought that being loved and adored by millions of people would surely fill up that deep, endless pit I carry inside myself. I thought that I wouldn’t be starved for that attention, affection, or redemption if I had the love of millions. But I was. I was still emotionally malnourished. What was the missing piece? Why did I feel so continuously betrayed? I’d been with Julie for enough years to recognize that she needed to be on her own path and to understand her own darkened past. She needed filling up as much as I did. The problem was, I wasn’t getting it from her, and she wasn’t seeking it from me.

  We continued going to our couples therapy class, and at least it helped us learn how to communicate better with one another. We learned how to share our feelings without placing blame or letting our own issues, our shadows, get in the way. We learned to convey our words directly about the issue at hand. Instead of saying, “You make me feel like this!” we learned to say, “When you say this, I feel sad, I feel hurt.”

  The real turning point for us came during a therapy session. Our therapist was trying to help us see that each of us was directing blame toward the other. The therapist turned to Julie and said, “Julie, you’re just blaming Melissa for this, you’re blaming her for that. You’re saying that it’s all her fault. What about you?” I think that Julie felt cornered by the question and overwhelmed by her emotions. She was blaming me for whatever it was that I represented in her life. Her response was a shocker. Julie turned to me and, instead of confronting her issues or admitting some blame, she said, “Well, I’m just not gay.” I was devastated. This came out of nowhere. Ten years of a relationship, and she says to me that she’s just not gay?

  She said, “You know, I’ve tried, and I’ve tried these last couple of years, and I’m just not gay.” Ten years and two children later seemed like a bizarre time to make that discovery. What was I supposed to do with that? There was no place left to go. Those words destroyed me. They destroyed our family. What did this all mean?

  Instead of storming out of the office, we started talking about what she meant exactly by telling me that she wasn’t gay. I had a million questions. I wanted to know if it meant that we could still live together but we wouldn’t have sex. What were the boundaries? Julie never said that she wanted to leave me. She never said that she wanted our relationship to be over. She wasn’t even acknowledging her bisexuality at this point. She simply said that she was no longer gay.

  This revelation came in the beginning of 1999. I was desperately trying to understand her. What I was hearing was that Julie was no longer attracted to me. That she was no longer attracted to women. She told me that, sexually, physically, she wanted a man. I wanted to know if she wanted to be married to a man or if she felt that she just needed a man’s presence in her life. There was no answer to that.

  By June 1999, we had made a decision that we would try whatever we could to save the relationship. At the end of six months, we would decide the fate of our future. In January 2000, we would make some choices.

  In preparation for the release of Breakdown, I was scheduled to give a free concert in San Francisco in August. This was the first time I’d played live for a general audience in two years. They had been hard years. Having children, dealing with my deteriorating relationship with Julie. I was so looking forward to this concert. I needed response from an audience—a response that would fill me up and make me feel better about my life.

  And for a few hours, it worked. I got out there and played hard. Maybe too hard. I was reaching, desperately trying to make myself feel better, to forget my problems and lose myself on stage. As the adrenaline of the show wore off and my emotions bottomed out again, I realized that the stage wasn’t going to solve these problems for me. The only way these problems were going to be dealt with was by me. For me. It was a hard realization. One I’d been avoiding for many years.

  Rolling Stone reviewed Breakdown on its release. It was the first time I felt that one of my albums got a really serious review. I’d always felt that, because I was sort of a singer of the people or for the people, I was not taken very seriously by critics. They even voted me Worst Singer in 1992. I’m not complaining; I have never been a critics’ performer and I was never a cerebral songwriter. When Rolling Stone compared my song “My Lover” to “Mother,” by John Lennon, I really drank that in and was grateful. I don’t write my songs for the critics. Never have. But that was the ultimate compliment. It was just incredible. It was really, really something.

  Lover Please

  • • •

  OF COURSE, ONCE THE ALBUM WAS OUT, IT WAS TIME TO tour again. Julie and I had discussed it, and we thought the best choice for the four of us would be to go on the road together. To have the whole family traveling together. Beckett was about eight months old, Bailey was about two years. Before we left, I loved the idea. I thought it would be fun. Fun and easy, just hanging out and playing before the shows, before I’d go and perform.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong. Within days of starting the tour, it was clear that Julie seemed to feel like she was only out there to be the mom. Like she was just following me around. And she hated that. What I thought would be joyful and interesting for the kids turned out to be a drag. It was hard on them because they woke up in a different place every day, without the comfort and security of a constant home. Sure, their moms were there with them, but their moms were trying to figure out their own relationship as well. And I was tired. Tired all the time. Tours are arduous and I need downtime. But on this tour, the second I stopped working I had a child thrust into my arms, to deal with, to comfort. I had thought that having my family on the road would help me feel whole, give me a better understanding of how to deal with the problems Julie and I were having.

  My band and me just before takeoff: Kenny Aronoff, me, John Shanks, and Mark Browne © 1996 MELISSA ETHERIDGE/PHOTO BY NICOLE BENGIVENO / MATRIX

  “You just landed on Park Place and it’s mine! Pay up.”

  © 1996 MELISSA ETHERIDGE/PHOTO BY NICOLE BENGIVENO/MATRIX

  I’ve got a lot on my mind. © 1995 MELISSA ETHERIDGE/PHOTO BY JODI WILLE

  But the opposite happened. Everything in my life began to be more and more compartmentalized. Separate. There was the performing self. Who had nothing to do with the personal self. Who had nothing to do with the mothering self. There was no wholeness. Only parts of me. Pieces of me. I felt like I was being pulled in different directions all the time, never having a moment to sit down and say, “What do I want? What do I need?”

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nbsp; It was a dark time for me, that tour. I mean, I enjoyed myself on stage like I always do, but in some sense I was just going through the motions. Being so scattered, I felt that I couldn’t fully commit myself anywhere. I was just searching—searching for a way to have it all make sense.

  Julie and I tried everything. We both made an effort to see if we could somehow find that piece that had been missing the past few years. We talked about the idea of living together and not having sex. We talked about living together and not being monogamous. I had been here before. This is not what I wanted out of this relationship. I had already been through Julie’s wanting and needing other people—men and women. What was driving her away? Was it me?

  As the months went by, I had to start thinking about myself. I need passion in my life. I’ll do a lot to stay in my relationships, but, at some point, I realized that I had been living without passion for the past couple of years. The idea that I would have a passionless existence for the rest of my life was unthinkable. The prospect of no attraction/no sex forever was something I could not fathom living with—even though it would mean keeping our family together.

  I think that I deserve to be cherished and appreciated and loved. I tried taking sex out of the equation. Let’s say that Julie and I were no longer going to be in a sexual relationship. We had spent eleven years together; we should be able to love each other. Maybe we could exist as best friends and keep our family intact. We had, after all, built a family together. Maybe I was putting too much emphasis on sex, and maybe it is not that important. Maybe if we found a bond as partners, I could accept this. But I couldn’t even find affection. There was no kiss good-night. No hug hello. When we were sexually involved, I thought that those things existed. To me, sex is affection. I explained how I felt to Julie and asked her if we could try having an affectionate relationship that wasn’t sexual. All I wanted was for her to say, “Good morning, hon,” and hug me and kiss me. I really thought that if I got that from her, then maybe we could stay together and work out something else for each of us sexually. We tried that for a few weeks, but things weren’t going as I had hoped. The weeks went by and it got to where Julie wouldn’t even kiss me good morning. I guess, to her, a kiss in the morning meant sex, and she just wasn’t going there. She couldn’t differentiate between what I called affection and warmth and what she saw as sex.