See me,
feel me,
touch me
heal me
--See me, Feel me by Pete Townshend
That's pretty heavy stuff for a 9 year old littel girl who had no idea what she was hearing - except that those words resonated with my spirit in a way nothing before or since ever has.
I was lost - from the moment I was born. I was alone - in a family of people who only thought about themselves and their own pain. In some that meant they were drunks, some drug addicts, some abusers, some child molesters - some - like me were just lost souls. I was molested by my Uncle when I was 7. At that moment I lost something very precious - my innocense and my ability to see the world as safe. At that moment I became someone who would never trust easily or would ever feel good enough, smart enough or pretty enough. My childhood was taken away from me with the touch of an adult man's hands.
I spent way too much time alone as a child. My sister had been molested as well - but she became more outgoing - looking for love from everybody but in the wrong way. Me, I closed up my heart and thought I would die never knowing what real love meant - because I would never - EVER - trust anyone again. I didn't believe love even existed - I thought it was just a weakness in people that they needed someone else in their lives. Not me. I would never need anyone.
So at 9 years old in our old - small kitchen - I fell in love - but I had no idea what that was. But I fell in love with Tommy. I knew what he felt. I knew how he was being abused and I knew that I had to know more. I had to know more of this story.
I didn't get the album until I was 14. Those 5 years had not been good to me. It seemed like the whole world wanted to destroy me. My shell got harder and harder to get through and my parents added to this by being angry and abusive with both my sister and I.
My sister was stronger than me - but I closed down even more over those years. By the time I heard the whole album Tommy - I sobbed through the whole thing. I sat in my little bedroom and just broke down. It was safe to do that there. No one could see me - no one could hear me - I could be vulnerable to the music. It lifted me for just a while, into a different world. My world was filled with so much pain, I willingly went along for the ride.
I felt the abuse, in a very real way, that Tommy suffered. I knew that pain very well. I felt joy when he triumphed, but I had no idea how that felt but somewhere in my mind it gave me hope I had never had before. Maybe someday I can be happy? No. That's not the way it works in my life. Besides I was never gonna let anyone in - so the only happiness I ever felt for a long time was when I listened to a Who album.
God, it was like Pete reached into my soul and pulled out my pain and read my mind and wrote about ME in so many, many songs. How did he know what it felt like to want to die? How did he know I was in so much pain that death seemed more attractive then going on with this miserable life? It wasn't until much later in life that I figured out that these are things all human's go through - but as a child - he was a God in my eyes.
There was one more thing about the See me - feel me - line that really touched me. When I was a kid I used to write all over things. It was my way of letting people know I was around. Tissue boxes, newspapers, books, magazines - they all got my handwriting on them. I got beat a lot for doing that but one of the things I wrote all the time on everything was this:
"Sandie was here."
It was my own plea of - See me, feel me..............
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