How U2 Came into My Life II...

- by Dawn Siegel | edged7199@hotmail.com

As a very very old time U2 fan (since Boy) I read this story with interest because I love U2 stories. I think all of us have one, and they are all meaningful and can make others think about things we never thought of before, kind of like U2 themselves, huh??

This one doesn't have a happy ending. I'm sorry about that, but unfortunately everyone doesn't live happily ever after. However, the part about listening to AB and living in the past struck me hard.

AB is a very special album to me. It's the album that enabled me to go forward after suffering through a bad relationship that nearly killed me. It's the album that helped me stop living in the past and look to the future.

Every song on that album can be applied to a relationship probably b/c of the circumstances under which the lyrics were written. Bono may have one woman for his entire adult life, but he knows enough about life, and has seen enough in other peoples lives to tell us many stories about not so perfect relationships.

One, to me, is not a happy song. It became the song b/c of which I could let go. "You gave me nothing now it's all I've got........you ask me to enter, then you make me crawl" was the story of my life, and I turned the next lyric back on myself: "and I can't keep holding on to what you got, if all you've got is hurt..." Because I was the one holding on to the hurt. He was gone. He didn't care. I had to deal. One helped me do that.

So Cruel, well, everyone who knows me knows that's my saving song. That's a destructive relationship put to music, and once I saw my story in print, I saw how incredible repulsive my life had become, and after being sick for a few days, said I don't want to be that person in that song....and started to move on.

Mysterious Ways?? Once you are thinking maybe, maybe about starting over, this is a good place to start. You've been living underground, eating from a can, you've been running away from what you don't understand..(love)"

Well, that's a shocker, to wake up and realize you've let your hurt take over, and you really aren't living. And you are running from the most wonderful thing that can happen to a person, falling in love. Even when it's bad, it was still good at the time, and always for a reason. It's the highest part of us, the one great truth.

This album is great for lost love. You can cry to it, scream to it, make accusations, roll on the floor and want to die. But something in it makes you want to live even more, if for nothing else than to hear it just one more time. Enough times and it starts to sink in, and enough more and you are on your way back to the world.

U2's music isn't about living in the past. It's not about feeling sorry for things you can't change or do anything about, at least not for very long. It's about seeing life for what it is, asking questions, finding answers. It's about making connections, and it's about the BIG questions in life: faith, spirit, sex, politics, and yes, there is a lot of love in there. The music brings people together, as obviously you know from your story. So let the music work the magic, it can work in your life and let it help you love again.

It helped me.  

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The essay was first posted on Wire, August 30, 2000, and reprint for this page purpose by kind permission of the writer.