Letting the Rain Remind Me

I am not a big music person; I don’t have a great understanding of music history and when there’s someone new to listen to, I’m usually the last person to know. I was raised as a theatre kid, listening almost exclusively to musicals and that’s pretty much stayed the same for my life. But there is only one artist who I have followed unwaveringly since I first heard her music in middle school, and watched as she crossed the threshold from radio to stage. Sara Bareilles has been present in my life when no one else has. She was there while I was processing the ruins of an abusive friendship, when my world was destroyed by a few simple words. She was there through a long stretch of depression and loneliness, a stretch when it felt like no one else could understand what I was feeling and what I lacked the vocabulary to put into words.  

I can still remember the first time I heard Love Song by Sara Bareilles, the moment, but neither the date nor what had happened that day. Rounding the bend, heading home in the passenger seat of my dad’s car, as the sun set over the Puget Sound in a reddish-yellow haze. 

The intended meaning of Love Song and what it means to me are, I imagine, completely different. In 2009, I was a High School sophomore invited to a get together by some old Middle School friends as one of them, Veronica, was back in town. I have a nasty habit of re-traumatizing myself to see if I can still feel the scars open up, and when it comes to Veronica, the scars run deep. I was young and stupid and I went anyway, remembering the worst friendship I’d ever had, and remembering one bad day with her horrible laughter. We played hide and seek once as children, and she found me very quickly. When I didn’t stand up fast enough, she kicked me in the stomach and laughed as I lay gasping on the ground. Plenty saw, no one said anything. One girl, a friend of hers I had never met, laughed with her. I remember the laughter and the condolences of those who didn’t come out of hiding to help me. Some days I am still that girl curled up on the floor as my friend laughs above me. 

I left the sleepover confused and bruised, when Love Song comes on the radio and sears itself into my brain. Little did I know, I’d be hearing the voice of the artist whose music would help me through some of the hardest periods of my life. I shushed my dad, like the disrespectful teenager I was, to hear her name, and bought Little Voice, Ms. Bareilles’ debut album, that weekend. Listening to it became an obsession-- I didn’t know music could be like this, that it could reach into my soul and show me my heart, putting words to the feelings of loneliness and fear rattling around in my chest. I had no one to talk to, Veronica had made me afraid to show weakness. If I asked a friend for support or love or help, I felt like a burden, an instinct I’m still trying to overcome. Sara Bareilles made me feel like I wasn’t alone, that she knew what I felt, that it would be okay. She still does. But she also had songs on that album that made me feel like a take-no-shit kind of girl, like Fairytale. So what if everyone had had their first kiss already? “I don’t want the next best thing.” 

The next year my teacher was discovered to be having a relationship with a student, another friend of mine. I had to talk to the police, and I felt like it was my fault for being the first one to eat lunch in his room and bring all my friends with me. I lost a trusted advisor and a safe space and I didn’t know who else to turn to. Everyone around me was struggling, I even avoided talking to the therapist my mom sent me to before I stopped going completely after just a few sessions. I constantly had to pretend I was okay. Now, it was Gravity that was getting me through the day. “Set me free, leave me be I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.” Struggling to keep my head above water, taking on the responsibility of taking care of anyone I could, I was just trying not to see what needed to be fixed in me. 

Ms. Bareilles’ second album, Kaleidoscope Heart, was released in September of 2010 and I already knew I was going to love it because King of Anything was an upbeat “fuck you” sort of song. It talks about a man who is talking down to the singer, giving her “advice” on how to live her life. I have a young face; I am told I look ten years younger than I am all the time, and I was also told then I will “appreciate this when I’m older”. At this point in my life, it leads to people talking to me like I don’t fully understand the meaning of the words coming out of their mouths. However, it expresses more than screw off to condescending assholes; in the second bridge, Sara sings “All my life I've tried to make everybody happy/ While I just hurt and hide/ Waiting for someone to tell me it's my turn to decide.” As a young woman who is often given unsolicited advice, this is fun to listen to on the subway while ignoring the men telling you to smile more. Kaleidoscope Heart has more than just King of Anything. Its ninth track, Let the Rain, is my absolute favorite song she has ever written. I have walked home in the middle of a rainstorm belting this out of tune more than once. 

I hold on to worry so tight
It's safe in here right next to my heart
Who now shouts at the top of her voice
Let me go, let me out; this is not my choice

And I always felt it before
That the world was filled with much more
Than the drowning soul I've learned to be
I just need the rain to remind me

I want to darken in the skies
Open the floodgates up
I want to change my mind
I want to be enough
I want the water in my eyes
I want to cry until the end of time

I don’t know why these words in particular have stayed with me for so long, why after four more albums, a musical and a tv show, this remains my favorite song to sing on the street like a crazy person. It might be the endless hope that everything gets better, the uplifting melody, and the promise of better days. All I know is it has been there for me through the loss of friends and family, the deep holes I dug myself into, and the long car rides at night when I feel the gaping chasm of loneliness rip open inside my chest. 

So much time has passed since that first time I heard Sara Bareilles’ voice over the radio in my father’s car. I lost friends I thought would be with me for the rest of my life, I dropped out of college and acting school, I moved south to be completely alone in Nashville and then moved back north to live with one of my best friends in New York City, I’ve even gotten married if you can believe that, and every step of the way, Sara Bareilles has been in my headphones. In fact, Sara and I both moved to New York around the same time and I secretly hoped I would run into her on the street. I even knew what I would say if it happened--I’d been rehearsing it in my head for years.

So, when I ran into Ms. Bareilles in Washington Square Park, I had my pre-composed script ready to go. “I don’t need a picture or an autograph, I just wanted to say thank you. That your music made me feel like I wasn’t alone” She thanked me. She hugged me and I (like a total creep) closed my eyes and tried to memorize the moment. I wasn’t ready for more of an interaction, I thought she’d walk away. But she stood there and I didn't know what to say. I could show her my poetry that I’d written, tell her I’d seen Waitress five times and whenever someone came to visit me, that was my suggestion for a show to go to. No, I just fumbled through telling her I’d seen her three times before (it’s two, I’m a moron) and that I’d see her in October at Madison Square Garden. I don’t remember really how it ended since by then I was in full panic mode over not having rehearsed this far (if I don’t prepare then I will say something stupid). All that matters in the end, is I got to say what I’ve needed to say to her for over ten years. I had my moment, check it off the bucket list.