The Crowing saved my life
I was 12 when "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" came out. A friend's brother had given me a ripped copy of SSTB a year prior, and Delirium Trigger had hooked me. I dove into the stories of Coheed & Cambria because my own life was too hard for me to comprehend at the time - my mom (when she was home) took her rage out on me and my life revolved around protecting my sister from the brunt of it.
My little sister was in the throes of an undiagnosed autoimmune illness that took my family to endless specialists across the US, often having to fly out at the drop of the hat - it'd been that way for years at that point, so I was well familiar with stepping off the bus to an empty home. I rarely had any notice, but the impacts of neglect are something akin to light from a star - by the time it reaches you, it's already a million years in the past.
From the outside, I lived a privileged life. Private school education, big house a mile from its nearest neighbor, upper middle class upbringing to the Nth degree. But my mom was struggling (to put it kindly) with the weight of being the primary caretaker for a very sick child with no answers + unmedicated bipolar disorder, and my dad was always somewhere else in the open ended drawers of "business".
8/10 times that the school bell rang, I'd step outside and wait for hours until the school asked where I needed to go- and like clockwork, my parents would call, apologetic that they'd forgotten to make arrangements, and some late bus or kind teacher would drive me the 40 minutes home, dropping me off in front of a big house with the lights off in the middle of the woods.
I never told anyone that I didn't have a key - it had slipped my parents' mind in all the chaos and I learned how to open the dining room window with a crowbar, and some part of me was aware that disclosing too much would create something bigger than I could handle. I'd hop out of the car with a game face on, wait til they receded down the driveway, and dip around back to try the window.
The house was old - 1840's- and the wood frame gave in easily anytime I asked. I'd crawl through the dog door in the garage, pull a crowbar from my dad's workbench he never touched, and crawl back out and toward my favorite window.
Once inside, I'd peel off my school uniform, cut on all the lights, and head to the barn. I'd saved up chore money for years to buy a horse from a neighbor, at a ripe $1,200 (a fortune to a 12 year old! My life's savings!), and I'd named him Beau- short for "Ambellina", because something about The Crowing had lodged itself in me from first listen.
I think our bodies hear the songs we need to hear long before our brain can parse out their significance, and some part of me knew this - gender norms be damned, this horse was my protector.
But when I got dropped off at home and no one was there, it was like... the rest of my life just stopped for a minute. I had all this room to run, and I did.
I'd head out to the barn, tack up Beau, and run at full speed through pine lined pastures down to the old river road, gutted on the sides by centuries of rain. We'd do a lap in the fields close to home and then just... take the fuck off. And the whole time: I listened to The Crowing on repeat, coaxing Beau to shift gait to tempo.
To say I sunk into these stories would be putting it lightly. Coheed & Cambria gave me a way out - a path, and a language around feelings I didn't know how to name or explain just yet.
I wanted to save my little sister somehow, but couldn't- and watched her breathe through ventilators for longer than any child should. When I wasn't watching her with worry, I was running from my mother and her hands. When I let myself ride long enough to clear a path for my heart to ring out, I felt a fresh, hot sort of anger well up in me about it all, and some resentment at the responsibility I was born into as the oldest sister in this broken family.
Beau and I would run jump circuits in the front field for hours to this song, with me singing along aloud the whole fucking time. I choreographed ribbon winning circuits to this song, not kidding. Predominately dressage, but I kept the pacing in my head with every cross country hedge we cleared, muddied but satisfied by the end. I competed with adults in the show circuit as a preteen, was trained by Olympic equestrians, but it always felt different, because it was. I ran them, these circuits, with this horse in the same way I ran them down river roads when I needed it in a way some folks just haven't ever needed anything. This horse was my coconspirator, my only friend who really knew what my life was like at home.
Beau and this record saved my life in ways I can't really even begin to calculate.
Years later, at 15, Beau got stung by a bee while we were riding and rightfully bucked me off, but dragged me through that front field, first- with one leg up, stuck in a stirrup, my tailbone hit ridge after ridge.
When he finally paused, I was one leg up and was fully paralyzed from the neck down. Beau stopped, turned, and stood over me until my parents noticed from a window and called the EMTs.
I will never know how long I laid there, because time gets hazy when you apply too much meaning to it (IMO), but when Beau saw me, he turned and stood directly on top of me, pressing his muzzle to the top of my head the entire time.
I regained feeling in my fingers and toes about an hour after the EMTs arrived, gently feeling some sort of life work its way back into me, limb by limb. Beau stood over me the whole time - immovable. I don't know how to explain it other than exactly that- he stood over me and waited, face pressed to my forehead, and all I thought about were the lyrics of this fucking song: "Dear Ambellina, the Prise wishes you to watch over me."
I know it's just a song, just a story. But I think the stories & consequent life we write into being have some sort of validity, some sort of truth, in a way that we might not yet understand. For me, this entire album gave me a world to jump into when I felt the walls close in on mine. I stood over my little sister, my heart to hers, to protect her the best I could when no one was protecting me. The indignant rage I felt at the circumstances, as a child, radiated off of me as some kind of buffer for her. I kept it up for as long as I could until I lost her in 2014.
I finally got to see my first Coheed show at 35 - and, if you can believe it, my long time friends opened for them.
I thought of Beau & my sister the whole time, and how glad I was to be alive to hear it all, how wonderful it was to realize that I'd made it out of those chapters of my life, alive and still listening, how grateful I was that someone had protected my heart long enough to let it find its way here full circle.
The people in this sub remind me that folks are still listening in a world that feels largely immune to nuance, at times, impervious to the magic that is remaining alive against all odds. I love you all for listening to this band the way I have for so many years, and for so kindly embracing the stories that come with it. Thanks for reading- attached is that same 12 year old posing for a church directory photo, and my little sister admiring a dragonfly she'd momentarily caught. You were my favorite 💛
Keep listening. Keep loving. Keep feeling. We are one upon the fence. 👐
