Not for the Faint of Heart

Music always inspires me and on Thursday night at the Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, I had an epiphany at the Jack White concert.

This has been a hard two months.  I did IVF, got a positive result for pregnancy and then seven weeks later was told I had lost the baby.  They called it a missed miscarriage where for some reason your body rejects the embroyo early on.  Only a sac remained.  Like an abandoned house that someone had moved out of, the sac stayed in my uterus as an awful reminder.  I was told I needed to schedule a DNC to clean up the mess.  I have learned that life is not for the sqeamish.  Nor for the faint of heart.

To think about it gives me a stone in my chest.  Since the diagnosis I have tried not to think about it too much.  Thinking can be overrated.

Instead, I stayed busy and went into work every day, resolving my clients' criminal problems and tried to move on.  Please excuse me if I seemed a bit distracted.  I felt like I was not myself anymore and this new me was disconcerting.  A type of Invasion of the Body Snatchers had set in.

At the Jack White concert on Thursday, I felt more like my old self.  We arrived early at 5 p.m. to try and get wristbands for the floor and saw that the will call line wrapped around the venue.  I shrugged my shoulders (shoulders encased by a Replacements t-shirt) and walked to the end of the line a block away.  The line moved and by six we were sitting in the bar next door to the venue.  You weren't allowed to leave once you had picked up your tickets so I snagged a table and Adrian brought me an O'Douls.

(Was I tempted to drink?  Of course.  I am always tempted.  But, I knew a Coors Lite would not solve anything and my almost two years of sobriety would be out the window.  And, I don't do moderation well my friends.  But that's another story for another day.)

By seven, they opened the doors.  The rush of excitement for me at a concert is always palpable.  It gives me a rush of adrenalin.  The crush of people in line to buy a t-shirt did not dissuade me and after forking over the cash, I changed into my new t-shirt.  We weren't familiar with the opening band so Adrian and I sat outside and basked in the sun on the patio.  I even smoked one illicit ciggerate (just one I promise) as I chatted with a purple haired girl about her tatoos.

By the time Jack White came on at almost ten, I was exhaused.  My feet hurt so bad that every time I stepped, I had tingles of pain.

By hour two, something happened.

Jack White played my favorite White Stripes song ("I can tell that we are gonna be friends") and I jumped up from my chair in the "disabled" section of the floor (don't judge, I was in a lot of pain and no one was sitting there) and started dancing like there was no tomorrow.  The music consumed me and song after song took away all the pain and sadness.  We stayed until the very last song which I almost killed myself jumping up and down to like a maniac and knew one thing for sure.

I was back.