The other day, whilst browsing my Facebook timeline before bed, I came across a clip of Adele’s new single. The title of her new song is “Hello” but listening to the lyrics it should actually be “Goodbye”! Adele’s perfect pitch, heart-rendering performance and carefully chosen words, pretty much stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t listened to Adele for a very long time and it took me right back to my past.
So while the rest of the world goes BACK TO THE FUTURE this week, this PR is going back to the past for a short while, reminding her about life meteorites. So what is a life meteorite you might ask…? Well, if you consider the concept of the life curve ball, the thing or person that appears from nowhere in your world and catches you unawares, the life meteorite is similar. But intense, powerful and much more destructive.
Over the years I have experienced a few life meteorites but none so powerful as one that was combined with a curve ball: a person who came into my life some years ago, hurling me around the constellations and leaving me in a pile of meteorite dust.
At the start of my descent into space, the Adele album, 21, was my staple diet. For one whole month I sat and stared into space, more or less. And cried. And turned into a very morose Bridget Jones. And I haven’t met a new man whom I allowed to even get close since. The dust is still settling. Bowie would have just slapped me around the head and told me that “We know Major Tom’s a junkie…” and it might have made perfect sense.
The night I met this life meteorite and it was a man (of course) I wasn’t even supposed to be going out or going into ‘that place’. I went in for one drink. At that time. On that day. And there he was. All bright white like a meteorite in his tight t-shirt.
And like a meteorite, he lit up my sky for a while and then came hurling, crashing back down to earth to strike me. And there I was, with my Adele album sitting in a (useless) therapist’s office, trying to understand what had just happened to me. Me, the ultimate survivor and Sabra, disintegrated into dark ash.
This meteorite completely broke me. He changed me and turned me inside out. I allowed this, I do not type these words out of blame. I don’t point the finger at other people for my life or circumstances. They are MY life lessons to deal with. And what was even weirder… the night I saw the new Adele single on Facebook, a sponsored ad also appeared on my Facebook page for a clothing company with the meteorite’s name. It was like Facebook was reading my thoughts or thoughts by association.
So whilst most of the world will just carry on with normal life once the BTTF statuses have become non-consequential, I wonder where all that ash has left me. I also wonder where the ash has left Adele and the millions of other people who have experienced life meteorites but shut themselves away and listen to Adele rather than vocalise or move on from their pain.
Adele’s voice still ripples with hurt and fragility. She has a new family and is ‘happy’ but her meteorite ash still clings to her soul and ultimately fuels her creativity and bank balance.
For me, the brave warrior who has won more than her fair share of life battles, ash still sits on my heart and on my fingertips. Regardless of whom I meet or what I do, that meteorite dust touches all of it. But I always look forward… only a Phoenix can rise from the ashes. And now, for the first time in years, my wings are about to take flight. And I look forward to my own movie script, entitled, FORWARD TO THE FUTURE. Move over Michael J, Fox… I really AM an 80’s blockbuster.