Like a Song: Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
@U2,
November 17, 2007
By: Tassoula E. Kokkoris
[Ed. note: This is the tenth in a series of personal essays by the @U2 staff about songs and/or albums that have had great meaning or impact in our lives.]
 There are times in life when a song resonates with you the instant you're introduced to it. For me, U2's "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" didn't.
When it was released, I was a high school student worrying about what universities to apply to, obsessing over whether there really was a second shooter (the movie JFK also came out that year) and practicing the latest routines as a dedicated member of the Marshall M-Ettes dance team. I had not yet fallen in love.
When I bought Achtung Baby, "Until the End of the World" quickly became my favorite. "Ultraviolet" was just a song that I sort of hummed along to on the way to "Love Is Blindness" (and yes, I'd skip "Acrobat"). It would be several years before "Ultraviolet" held any meaning for me, becoming frighteningly relevant to my personal life.
To put it simply, I'm terrible at relationships. My track record is so laughable, I could name the boys from my past in the fashion of Friends episodes. There was The One Who Was the Wrong Religion, The One Who Had a Great Family (But Also Had a Drinking Problem), The One Who Wasn't Smart, and so forth.
Don't get me wrong, each one of these guys had great things about them, but they weren't good matches for me. And as a single twentysomething female, there was a lot of pressure to be with someone. Get the ring, have the kids, live happily ever after. For a long time, I genuinely thought it was my civic duty to achieve this.
But then life got in the way and I started to grow up. Friends got cancer, family members passed away, I began hating the job I had once loved and finally parted from The One I Thought I'd Eventually Marry. It was a difficult time and though I didn't realize it, what I needed was someone in my life to lean on -- someone I could really trust.
Enter a gentle, kind man who was everything I'd ever wanted. He happened into my life just the way all of the clichés said he would: when I truly wasn't looking.
At first he was a comfort, then a confidant, then finally the person I shared my deepest, darkest secrets with. When I cried, he cried along with me. When we laughed (and we laughed a lot), we laughed together. Falling in love with him was the easiest thing in the world and that's how I knew it was real: I was only myself in his presence and didn't feel the need to be anyone else. He liked me just the way I was.
One day in the midst of our bliss, I turned my Achtung Baby CD on as I was home alone doing housework. I sang and danced along to just about everything, but when I got to "Ultraviolet," I stopped short.
You know I need you to be strong And the day is as dark as the night is long Feel like trash, you make me feel clean I'm in the black, can't see or be seen
And this is what's great about U2's music. All of a sudden, this song that had never "spoken" to me before was yelling at me directly. It was as if Bono's voice replaced mine, telling this wonderful man that he was responsible for my life turning right-side up again.
I kept listening, and the lyrics, which always seemed so simple before, brought immediate tears to my eyes.
Baby baby baby light my way All right now Baby baby baby light my way
The truth is when you're in love -- and I mean really in love -- the whole world lights up. Your once-mammoth problems seem miniscule, you find joy in things you never expected, and your nightmares transform into beautiful dreams. My boyfriend's influence on me illuminated my entire way of thinking. My cynicism softened, my anger dissipated, and I learned for the first time how to really trust another human being. To me, he was magic.
A few weeks after I had the epiphany about "Ultraviolet," my new love presented me with a gift, the classic gift every boy makes for every girl he falls for: a mix CD. And in addition to songs we'd discussed having in common and songs he loved that I'd never heard of, there was a U2 gem waiting for me toward the end of the collection. It was "Ultraviolet," and oddly enough, I'd never mentioned a word about liking this song to him. Again -- he was magic.
We soon became one of those couples that I used to loathe. The kind that spends hours on the phone talking just to hear the other's voice and giggles as they finish each other's sentences.
Unfortunately, despite our immense happiness, my relationship pattern didn't end with him. He did leave me -- rather abruptly -- and the grief was more than I could bear. I missed work, stopped eating, refused to get out of bed and made "Ultraviolet" the most painful break-up song that ever existed. Like so many other times in my life, Bono's voice became my medicine. Over and over, I'd play this part:
I remember when we could sleep on stones Now we lie together in whispers and moans When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head Your love was a lightbulb hanging over my bed
It's been years since he left me and I still can't fathom a happy future without him. But no matter how long my heart remains broken, I'll never lose sight of the incredible gift he gave me: the gift of feeling loved. The luxury of knowing what it felt like to be wanted and needed in equal measure by another person, if only temporarily.
And that's why, instead of calling him The One That Got Away, I now simply refer to him as The One.
© @U2/Kokkoris, 2007.
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