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A Promise To Keep

Late that fall, slowly recuperating from the back injury at a holistic pain clinic in Springfield, Missouri, I was to have to deal with my second love triangle. I had fallen in love with Stephen, and Merrill had to be told. I caused him quite a bit of pain, and I know that he was left with some bitterness for me.

(Fade in Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time” [1984])

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
and think of you
caught up in circles confusion--
is nothing new
Flashback--warm nights--
almost left behind
suitcases of memories,
time after--

fade out)

Instead of having back surgery that fall of 1984, on the advice of my massage therapist, Geoff, I went to the Shealy Holistic Health Clinic in Springfield, Missouri for two weeks. They turned me around and set me on a healing course, sans surgery. I called Stephen from the Clinic on November 9 to tell him to come from St. Louis and get me the next day, and also to propose that he move in with me on a permanent basis. He agreed.

(Fade in Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time,”

if you're lost you can look--and you will find me
time after time
if you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting
time after time

fade out)

The betrayal of Merrill’s trust bothered me terribly, but hooking up with Stephen was the right, the only thing to do. I finally had a relationship that felt right. Not that Stephen and I haven't had our problems over the last twenty five years. But it has become apparent that we are soul mates, in some senses of that term. I wrote this adolescent song of love for Steve early in 1985. After all those rejections of love and by lovers, I finally have kept a promise. I think it’s proven that I meant what I said in this song I wrote so many years ago:

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