Soundtrack of My Life: "#1 Must Have"

Isn't it strange how we sort of "forget" about particular music sometimes? Not that we no longer recall that it exists, but things change and we stop listening to it so much and the enjoyment it holds fades from memory. 

That had happened to me with Sleater-Kinney. (To be fair, it's happened with music in general, to a large extent, because I primarily listen to stuff in my car, and I barely go anywhere in these days of COVID, and when I do go somewhere I've taken to listening to audiobooks. And wow, was that a crazy run-on sentence.)

But I was reminded of them recently, and I've had their albums on constant shuffle while I work for the past couple of weeks. 

A lot of their songs could make this "soundtrack of my life" thing I'm working on, but I went with "#1 Must Have" because it seriously may have saved my life. 

This track appears on the album All Hands on the Bad One which has other songs that I frankly enjoy more. "You're No Rock 'n Roll Fun" is perhaps my favorite song of theirs to sing along to, "Youth Decay" has some of my favorite lyrics of theirs ("I'm all about a forked tongue and a dirty house"), and "Milkshake 'n Honey" is, well, just lovely.

But "#1 Must Have" is the song of theirs that, as soon as I hear the opening chords, transports me to another time and place. It's not one I particularly enjoy reliving, but one that I must be careful not to forget so I never end up in a similar situation. It was 2002, in that murky time of year in the Midwest that's technically fall but sure feels like winter. I was in a bad marriage, the kind of bad that made me feel like a fool but made my husband a criminal. I had spent my birthday in the hospital, kept there longer than my insurance preferred because no one involved in my care wanted me to go home with him after he got so angry at my mother for suggesting he should be at work (I had run out of sick time and wasn't getting paid) that he turned over the table in the visiting area and stormed out of the building. 

I knew I needed to leave, but I felt trapped. He would spend all his time in the back bedroom of our apartment on the internet, and I was happy just to be left alone. I spent those hours sitting at our kitchen table, playing Text Twist on my laptop (these were the days of dial-up internet so only one of us could be online at a time), eating butterscotch chips that were meant for holiday cookies, and listening to the copy of All Hands on the Bad One that I kept renewing from the St. Louis County public library. 

"#1 Must Have" is not about domestic violence. It was written after the 1999 Woodstock concert where there were numerous reports of male attendees harassing, intimidating, and engaging in all kinds of sexually assaultive behavior against the female concert goers. 

"Will there always be concerts where women are raped? Watch me make up my mind instead of my face. The #1 must have is that we are safe."

But that last line resonated with me, stuck in my mind to the point that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had been a proud feminist since I was really young. I didn't come across this descriptor myself. The sixth grade teacher whose class I visited for math told me I was a feminist after I complained about unequal treatment of his students based on gender. He probably didn't mean it as a compliment, but I took it as high praise. 

But now here I was, putting up with simply abhorrent behavior from the person who'd stood in the church where I grew up and promised in front of our friends and family to "love, honor, and cherish" me. I wasn't even in the position so many abused wives/partners find themselves in, financially dependent on their abuser. I was the breadwinner in my marriage

My 11-year-old self would be so disappointed in me. I could feel her disgust at what I'd let her become. I had to get out. 

And in April of the following year, I finally did.

Now that lyric wouldn't have been enough on its own. It was much more the women in my life, in-person and online, who helped me find the strength to get out. But that song was the thing that jolted me from the haze I was living in and brought just how unacceptable my living conditions were into sharp enough focus that I couldn't keep ignoring how desperately I needed to escape.

It was while I was with him that my food addiction grew to life-threatening proportions. As I recover and, as a result, lose weight, I think of the pounds I lose in terms of the life situation I was in while I gained them. I'm out of the "Peoria pounds" now and into the "Dan pounds." (This doesn't mean I blame him or "Peoria boss" for the weight I gained - they created situations that made me long for escape, to be sure, but they didn't force me to deal with them in the way that I did.) 

I write these things down because they're all still in there, coming to the surface as the ease of all that food and excess weight is lifted. I write them down so I don't wind up stuffing them all down again. And I share them in case they can help someone else.