I wrote a song for you when I was sixteen. It was 1986. I dressed in “Like a Virgin” Esque hand-me-down clothes from my thirty-two-year-old mother, permed and teased my hair to your likeness and wrapped my wrists with bangles and crosses.
I fantasized that my words would be so profound that you would demand to perform this song. That it would be moving and emblematic of the pain I felt in the sixteen years I had been alive.
As I read your song today, July 1, 2020, I realize that my words indicated submission and defeat. I was ready to accept life as it was–horrible. I summarize that I tricked myself for survival. I told myself that anything else would be lonely.
So, dear, Madonna, if you ever read your song please know that for me to trust in you my most vulnerable self, my most beat down and tattered and lonely self, it was the most precious gift I could offer.
Its title, Disillusion. Its context–armor worn by a young girl’s broken heart. I had already experienced an entire life’s worth of poverty, abandonment, sexual misconduct, hunger, abuse, neglect, and the wrath of drug addiction on my family. I was ready to dismiss getting out of such a life by rationalizing that it made me feel loved. After all, its the only kind of love I knew at the time.
Disillusion
While I weep,
I find my sleep,
And drift into a world so unreal.
I leave this place
With an empty face,
To fill it with expressions I can’t conceal.
Oh, let me be free. Oh, let me be free.
Now blind of duties
I wish not to go back I say please.
To that land where his promise has an empty place.
I have created an illusion
That I have decided to live in,
And to add to a new race.
Oh, let me be free. Oh, let me be free.
I let myself run
In the bright burning sun.
I find a knight to carry me away.
His gifts of gold,
My new life I mold,
To be better than the one I had yesterday.
Oh, let me be free. Oh, let me be free.
I sleep and play
In any hour of a day.
I am treated as if I am a goddess.
Now to add to my greed,
I have all the men I’ll ever need.
The real world is one I’ll never miss.
Oh, let me be free. Or, let me see.
I come and leave
To the likings that I please,
And give no-one an ounce of respect.
All I can do
Is feel all for me and none for you.
What is it that you could possibly expect?
Oh, when will I see? Oh, when will I see?
I control thousands of homes,
My palaces with my thrones.
They keep me company when I’m sick of being alone.
I have followers
That multiply as much as new-comers,
Who want to worship and never go home.
But these are only people,
That to me are nothing but feeble,
Because I no longer cry myself to sleep.
Oh, yes, I see. I want to be me.
In this dream,
I can live on how life seems,
Instead of playing a role and making it deep.
My whole family,
Now is nothing but my history,
Because I have what is real, I think.
Who needs to marry?
But, without a lover, nights would be scary.
Then again, all I need is money, food, and drink.
Could it be true
That being wealthy has nothing to do
With being important, loved and needed?
Could it be possible
That my mind is quite gullible
And all limits have been exceeded?
Oh, yes, I see. I will be me. I will be me.
I think my sleep,
May end with a thankful weep.
This creation of perfection is untrue.
Now may we
Decide to grow and see,
The pain we rule and sow.