Bon Jovi songs have saved my life, maybe even literally.
I have loved Jon Bon Jovi from the first moment I laid eyes on him. He represented everything that was the opposite of the life that had already been mapped out for me at the tender age of 13, in the confines of an Indian Township in apartheid-era South Africa. People were already asking me which university I would go to and what I would study, rather than whether or not I would go. All the boys I knew had to meet the school regulations of keeping their hair so short it didn’t even touch their shirt collars. Jon’s curly wild mane blowing around his shoulders spoke to me of freedom and escape into a world where anyone could be anything. To this day, watching those “hair bands” from the 80s makes me smile. I must have been around 14 or 15 when my gran was around while a Bon Jovi music video played on TV. Her reaction has been a family joke ever since. “Ayo. That fella is so rich but he can’t buy one shirt and one comb.” Jon was in his signature leather pants and vest. She clearly missed the drool worthiness of his biceps and abs. When were turned 18 we were legally allowed to drink but it still felt weird talking about it around our parents. My cousins and I would say something about “Bed of Roses” to reference parties where there would be alcohol because of the line “bottle of vodka still lodged in my head” I remember the day ticket sales opened for their first concert in my hometown of Durban. My cousin and I were furious that our parents wouldn’t let us camp outside the shop selling tickets. We were certain that the tickets would be sold out by the time we got there later in the day. Turned out there was barely a queue. Since we could only afford standing-room tickets anyway, it didn’t even matter. The day of the These Days Tour (3 December 1995 – at King’s Park Stadium, as it was called in those days) dawned bright and sunny. I took 2 of my cousins (one of whom was underage). We got to the stadium at 12 (for a concert that started at 6). None of us could believe that we were the first ones there. How did everyone with standing-room tickets not want to get there early enough to be in the front row?! Needless to say, the three of us were right up against the makeshift fence that separated us plebs from the VIPS. The VIP area was so large it crushed my dreams of being pulled up on stage and having Jon fall madly in love with me. It remains one of my most memorable life experiences – screaming ourselves hoarse while bouncers literally hosed us down so we wouldn’t faint from dehydration or heatstroke. The old classics like Living on a Prayer, You Give Love a Bad Name, and Runaway made it onto various mixed tapes and CDs over the next few years. Sleep When I’m Dead was the anthem of my party days. I often played Blaze of Glory just because it’s a damned good song. One day in 1998 the lyrical power of their music hit me harder than I thought possible. I had gone through loads of turmoil and was living alone in a tiny little sublet space in somebody else’s house. It was one of the worst times of my life. One of my very few pleasures at the time was a little transistor radio that I kept on all the time so I would feel less lonely. Thank goodness my rent included electricity. Nothing could have prepared me for the raw energy of “Something for the Pain”. I cried so hard it felt like I might never catch my breath again. I even turned off the radio when the song ended, so that the lyrics could play over and over in my head until the song faded and my tears dried up. Up until that point in my life I had never had a truly cathartic cry. We were never taught any kind of emotional coping skills. When my sister died, I was told to stay strong for my parents so they wouldn’t worry about me. When my Dad died I was told to be strong to look after my mom. When I finally broke down and told my mom that I had been raped she told me that while I lived under her roof I would find a healthier way to deal with it than drinking myself into a stupor. I chose not to live under her roof. The words: Give me something for the pain Give me something for the blues Give me something for the pain When I feel I've been danglin' from a hangman's noose Give me shelter from the rain Give me something I can use To get me through the night Make me feel all right Something like you, come on, come on, come on Struck so many chords deep inside me. I must have cried for hours. I could so relate to that feeling of dangling from a hangman’s noose. Something in that release fixed a part of me that I thought would be broken forever. By December of that year, I was ready to marry my on-again, off-again boyfriend of nearly two years. We are still together almost a quarter of a century and 2 children later –and Jon Bon Jovi remains a free pass. Various songs have touched me in different ways over the years. Hey God was exactly the angry blasphemous release I needed to screech at the top of my voice whenever the state of the world got too much for me to handle. Some Day I’ll Be Saturday Night was a happy feel good song to combat the blues from time to time. Life got better for a long while. Costa and I had a daughter. I completed my undergraduate degree and was almost done with my post-grad in education. One of the course requirements was ten weeks of teaching practice. The school that accepted my application was a former Model C. When apartheid ended in South Africa it was decided that instead of building new schools in previously disadvantaged areas, the government of the day chose to bus kids in so they could attend better-quality schools in more affluent areas. This particular school was heartbreaking. The area around it was upper middle class so the parents of the kids that used to attend there during apartheid simply pulled their kids out and put them into more exclusive schools. The kids that were there by the time I got around to teaching were either too poor to be moved to the private schools, children of the live-in domestic helpers in the area, or kids that were bussed in from the townships. These kids stole my heart but also broke it every single damned day. They had to wake up at ridiculous hours of the morning to catch the public transport that brought them to school. There was no electricity or running water in most of their homes. They (and/or their older siblings) would walk sometimes more than a mile to fetch water for their mom to heat over a fire so they could clean themselves while she cooked a weak porridge for breakfast, which they ate before leaving home at 6am to arrive at school by 7:30. By the time they got to my class at 8, they were already hungry again but expected to keep going until the first break at 10. I was forced by the governing body of the school to treat them the same as kids who had woken up at 6:30 to shower and have a proper breakfast while watching cartoons before being driven or walking 2 minutes to get to school. One of the rules that everyone had to obey was not eating in the classroom. I turned a blind eye to kids sneaking bites of their sandwiches. It broke my heart to hear teachers complaining about kids eating in class. This was just one of many issues that made teaching in South Africa unbearable for me. I was ready to throw in the towel after the third week but I wouldn’t get the course credit if I didn’t complete the ten weeks. I was (and still am) obsessed with radio. One day I was driving towards the school in tears (crying became a whole lot easier after that first time and then the hormonal craziness of pregnancy). The thought of facing social inequalities day after day was killing me. Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life slowly started to fill up the car. The line, “Don’t bend, don’t break, baby don’t back down” reminded me to keep my eye on the prize. I couldn’t change the present living conditions of any of those kids but I could inspire them to fight their way to a better future. Every time I got despondent, I would say that line to myself and prepare a lesson that would knock their socks off. After those ten weeks, the school often asked me to come back as a substitute teacher and eventually offered me a permanent position. The entry-level salary was less than what it would have cost in school fees and petrol for me to send my daughter to a private school. We decided it was a better plan to homeschool our daughter. After our son was born I struggled terribly with post-natal depression. Yes, it was depression. I can say that with the clarity of my newfound litmus test. I would still have felt suicidal even if somebody had given us a million dollars. We were already living the kind of life where we were able to have the perfect birthing experience at a private natural birth clinic that was like a five-star hotel with medical staff. Yet somehow, in the weeks that followed, I had convinced myself that I didn’t deserve any of this. My husband and children would be better off without me – it was pitiful. My daughter and begged me to stay up to watch the Grammy Awards with her. No prizes for guessing the headline act. Yep. Bon Jovi had a new album out. I have no idea how it did on the charts but one of the new songs they played started my slow reawakening into my life. The line, “I am a rock not just another grain of sand.” from Because We Can jumped out at me. We had IPods and the internet by then so I downloaded the song and played it over and over again. The next little while was a rollercoaster of emotions. It wasn’t easy to pull myself out of that space. There were still many, many bad days to come. On one of those days, hubby brought home an old VHS tape of the These Days album. My daughter and I watched it together and laughed at the 80s fashions and the memories helped me find my way back. Since then life has taken many twists and turns. I still smile when I see references to Bon Jovi. I love that Jon has opened a soup kitchen. A picture of him washing dishes did the rounds on Facebook again recently. It warms my heart to know that he is changing so many more lives, even if he never knows that he may have saved mine.
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