Bruce Springsteen Saved My Life

Music, memory and moving on.

My arm

I wanna sleep beneath peaceful skies, in my lover’s bed. With a wide open country in my eyes, and these romantic dreams in my head. “No Surrender” by Bruce Springsteen

November 1980. Thanksgiving Day, I’m 12, sitting on Aunt Carole’s red and green plaid couch waiting for my best friend and her family to pick me up to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. My first concert. I anxiously pick my cuticles. I mean, Bruce. At the Garden. My mom even let me wear my favorite carpenter jeans to Thanksgiving so I wouldn’t have to change for the concert.

We live in Rockland County, New York, a northwest suburb of The City that borders New Jersey. When I say I live there people say, “That’s New Jersey, right?” and it basically is. We buy our clothes in Jersey because they don’t have sales tax and we claim Bruce as our own.

My older brother and cousins are jealous, they can’t believe I get to do this. None of them were allowed to go to concerts at 12 and none of our parents were cool enough to take them.

I’m often told I’m lucky — to be adopted, to be pretty, popular, good at sports, smart — but I don’t feel lucky. Most of the time I feel alone and scared. Somewhere I know it’s not normal to be scared all the time, to vibrate and buzz, to…