Hey yeah,
If we can't find a way out of these problems
Then maybe we don't need this

In the late nineties and the early part of the 2000s I was involved in the Savage Garden street teams, promoting their new (at the time) album, Affirmation.  The second song on this album is one we were promoting as a single, calling radio stations requesting it, et cetera.  I was part of a sort of family.  We laughed a lot but sometimes we were there to support each other in difficult times.  I had four friends I was especially close to:  Barbara, Dennis, Sian, and Mark.  Dennis was Sian's brother and Mark was his best friend.  I was in a major depressive episode and Sian was in the hospital recovering from abuse her father had inflected on her. 

Standing face to face
Enemies at war we build defenses
And secret hiding places

Dennis needed brain surgery for the same reason his sister was in the hospital.  He was rushed to the trauma room one night during the time that we were planning ways to get the radio stations around the world to play Hold Me.  Barbara and I were on the computer talking to each other throughout the night and she had contact with his doctor.  They had planned to do the surgery later that week but had to move it up because of a clot.  Not long after that I lost internet privileges and was unable to speak to Dennis, Sian, and Mark but still had limited contact with Barbara.  I felt like I was stuck in a cave.  All my fears and dreams were lurking just outside the cave entrance.

I might need you to hold me tonight
I might need you to say it's alright
I might need you to make the first stand
 

My mom caught me on the computer when she got up for work at six am and I was punished by being restricted from the computer.  I was a college student and needed the computer but that did not matter to my family.  That morning I had class at nine am.  I always got there about half an hour or forty-five minutes early because I had to drop my siblings off at the elementary school by eight.  I went straight to the computer lab to check my email for news on Dennis.  She had talked to him just before he went into surgery.  He had asked her to tell me that he loves me and believes in me. 

More than angry words I hate this silence
It's getting so loud

That day it was impossible to concentrate in any of my classes.  Even after going to bed that morning I got no sleep.  I had just laid there bawling.  I  tried calling radio stations requesting Hold Me by Savage Garden but I cried even while I was asking to dedicate the song to my dear friend.  I'd never had a friend tell me they love me before.  It felt strange.  He knew he might not make it through that surgery.  I knew it too and I cried at school.  I excused myself more than once from class to go into the bathroom and cry.  Why was I crying about something happening to someone on the other side of the world who I had never met and knew I never would?

Well I want to scream
But bitterness has silenced these emotions
It's getting hard to breathe

I was not allowed to use the internet at home, and eventually not even the computer at all after that so I sat alone in silence during the nights and cried.  The depression got deeper and deeper with each passing night.  My friends online helped me get through the nights.  They made them not so long.  Having friends from all around the earth made my world not so small, it let me be myself, the real me, not the person behind the walls I'd built up. 

So tell me isn't happiness
Worth more than a gold diamond ring?
 

I felt so lonely.  I felt like no one in my life cared about me except for some people I'd never see face to face except for photos.  Why did my family take them away from me?  I could not understand it.  What did I do that was so terrible that everything I enjoyed was taken from me.  They said they were doing it for my own good but I just did not understand how taking my only true friends away from me was helping me.  I felt like I'd never be happy again.

I'm willing to do anything
To calm the storm in my heart
I've never been the praying kind
But lately I've been down upon my knees
Not looking for a miracle
Just a reason to believe

I talked to Barbara on the phone less and less.  She had a life and other friends.  At the time I had no one.  All my friends were busy with their new lives as college freshmen and off into the working world.  I was alone.  I was failing my classes because everything needed to be done with a computer and the internet.  My family blamed my depression on spending so much time in front of "that damn computer".  They didn't realize it actually was helping me, giving me hope.  I started praying for the world to end.  I started praying for a friend who would give me a hug and tell me everything was going to be alright but that friend didn't come. 

I spent my nights in my room crying as I remember all the fun I'd had talking to my friends and how much easier homework had been when I could talk to someone about it.  Now I had nothing and no one and it eventually led me to the edge and I tried to kill myself. No one even knew I was that depressed.  I was the only one that realized I'd stopped living and was just going through the motions.  My family who saw me each and every day had no clue.  All my friends were too busy with their own lives to even call me. 

Do you remember not long ago?
When we used to live for the nighttime
Cherish each moment
Now we don't live we exist
We just run through our lives
So alone
That's why you've got to hold me

 

 

 Lyrics from "Crash and Burn" by Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones
Used within fair use.


CST Approved

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