The illusion of "going home."

Dear Steve,

Hi, I am sitting in the car in front of the psych hospital where Pete's son is having a major meltdown. I just can't go back up there. I have always had a phobia of hospitals and doctors. This place creeps me out. 

This trip to NY has been very emotionally draining for Pete, especially. I am physically tired but Pete is super tired all over and inside too. His heart is huge, but his emotional limits are in close proximity as well.  This has really been hard for him.

To see your youngest child breakdown into dementia at age 25 is heartbreaking to say the least. He is also mostly blind--though apparently he is no longer considered "legally blind." he can see a little peripherally but not in the center of his eyes at all. We do not know what is causing all this. The doctors have ruled out Multiple Sclerosis and several other diseases with these symptoms. It is still a mystery.

It's blustery, snowing like mad, mixed with rain, and super windy and cold.  March is definitely coming in like a lion around here. 

Today on Facebook, yet ANOTHER rumour about you getting back with Journey has been circulating....same rumour, really, as before.  It was officially DENIED by Fan Asylum. But WOW some of the fans have been going wild over it, almost as if their very LIVES depended on it. That scares the bejeezus outta me. I wrote a comment stating that "if Steve EVER rejoins Journey, I will personally bite his face off and kick his sexy butt, because he is better off WITHOUT them."

But others are all pissed off at "the jerk who started this rumour," and "how mean and cruel it is to say such a thing," getting everybody's hopes up, etc., etc., etc.  I mean, seriously, this is so surreal to read those comments.  The world is collapsing all around everybody, but all they can think about is whether or not Steve Perry will rejoin Journey.  Wow. Doesn't that freak you out?!

Nobody has answers to solve the problems of the world--they just all want to FEEL GOOD and be happy. They project the voids of their own lives onto YOU, an external source, to provide them with that happy goodness. I find that to be so very sickeningly dysfunctional and even scary when you really think about it.

You are just a man. Sure, you're popular and talented and famous. But you're just another guy. How come people look to you to be a super-hero??  It's like children dealing with divorce--they want mommy and daddy to reunite SO BADLY that they project that idea on everyone and start a rumour about it, in hopes that if they think that thought hard enough, and oftenenough, it may really happen. And that would solve every problem in the whole world. 

I see patterns in everything. Pete's mom and now his son, constantly ask to "go home." with his mom, it's typical of Alzheimers disease that the patient says this repeatedly. But what they are really SAYING is the emotion behind it---they want to go back to the way they used to be. To the way their lives used to be. 

Telling her that she IS home doesn't work. It only agitates her more.  Pete's son says this, with his fists clenched, and declarations of "suing the doctors" for keeping him "in this PRISON.". He is 6'2" tall and 280 pounds---a big dude---so I told him he will never be let out if he keeps behaving angrily  and threatening doctors.  Atavan calmed him down, but he needed to know that it's not his fault that this is happening, and he is not being punished either. I explained that the medications they are giving him take TIME to get thru his system, and the doctors have to figure out the right doses to give him that help him get better, and he will just have to be patient and trust that what he's doing is the best thing. He may never get back to how he used to be.

Like Pete's mom, his son may never get to truly "go home." but the comforting WORD of "home" is what he desperately needs right now, to hang on. He has no idea that he may have to go live in an assisted living home for the rest of his life. It'd be a "home," but NOT the "home" that he wants, and he is communicating about, at all. 

Why can't Journey fans, and Steve Perry fans understand that they CAN'T go back to the way things used to be? Why can't politicians understand that? Why can't people see that the only "HOME" they ever really HAVE, is inside their own hearts, connected to God, like a budding flower that needs to be nurtured and cared for. 

Why can't people find their own happiness without expecting others to provide it?? 

You, Stephen, KNOW without a doubt that you can never "go home" to reunite with the boys of Journey. You've said it many times. Still people don't want to hear that.  The boys in Journey know that you will never join them again. Everybody involved in anything even remotely connected to you and Journey knows that.

Why can't a ripple effect expand outwards to the general public fans?? Why does everybody want to "go home?"  They look to Obama to take them "home" again, the way things used to be, when Obama has NO intentions of EVER going backwards with this country. The medicine we all have to take might taste bitter, but it takes TIME to get thru the whole country, or system, and the DOSE of that medicine also has to be tweaked, balanced, and given more time to work right. All the societal victims of instant gratification cannot seem to grasp this fact. The naysayers make up problems that don't need fixing, to occupy their time waiting for that miracle cure that will never come as fast as they'd like it to. Obama is like the head scientist at a huge disease control center, trying to avoid an epidemic of desperation and unrealistic expectations based on fear that permeate through the veins of this country. Medication is needed to help fix this disease, a medicine that nobody wants to take. If you have to pay $5 for a gallon of gas, that is NOT something Obama can control---but it WILL force you to take the medicine, won't it? That is, you won't be able to eat out every day anymore, because of the added expense of gasoline to everyone's budget. And in doing this, a little sacrificing, a little changing of the spending habits, that medicine will have time to sink in and help resolve the problem.

It's just silly to think that people never seem to get just how unrealistic it is to expect perfection and going "home" to the way things once used to be. It's infantile.

Yet....at the same time, I also lament about and miss the way people used to be.  I miss ADULTS.  I'd like to "go home" to a time when things made sense, when logic and reason were the norm, when people had respect for each other and knew right from wrong, and practiced the golden rule.

Nobody ever goes home unless they do it WITHIN themselves, and makes their own resignated acceptance and peace with God. 

"Let go, and Let God." My friend Melva said that to me a lot.  I didn't fully understand that until I grew older and took a long, hard look at the world around me. 

Will your fans EVER "let go" of the reuniting illusion that they crave so desperately?? I don't know. Maybe like the Beatles, it will have to take a death to end that unrealistic hope. 

People need to stop. Just stop. Stand still in silence. Sit down and breathe. Stop hyperventilating about things they are not able to control. It only whips people up i to a frenzied mob full of anger and frustration and hatred. 

I am sad that people can't ever really go home again.  But it's a hard fact of life that HOME is what you make it, not a physical location, not a projected emotion on an external source. It's self-reliant. It is within each one of us to achieve that comfort on our own, in our own way. 

I don't know if these silly rumours will ever cease.  But I do hope that people can wake up from their fantasies to realize they are the only ones who have the key to their own prisons, and to their inner home comfort zones. 

I gotta go for now.  Love you lots.

--Rebecca