Juliana Hatfield's Bad Boy Decisions

It was never the guy's fault when it fell apart. It was my fault for falling for the guy who was born with the voice that made my knees weak. The man with the voice that helped to heal my wounded heart could also break it. The man could not help me; only his music could do that. That was what I finally learned through all that trial and error.

I loved rock and roll. And so I loved the rock and rollers. I always wanted to be one of them. I believed that only the godforsaken (or rock-forsaken) sound of my voice, and my debilitating self-consciousness, kept me from being admitted into that (mostly) boys' club. I yearned for recognition and accomplishment in the rock arena and I gravitated toward those who possessed or at least deserved what I wanted for myself. But I was misguided.

Because at heart, I am not a rock and roller. At heart I am a librarian, a bird-watcher, a transcendentalist, a gardener, a spinster, a monk. I was like a fish out of water in the modern rock world. That was why I was so often discontented and unsure of my self and my place. I was in the wrong environment — that's why it always seemed to me as if something wasn't quite right.

I don't want loud noise and fame and scandal and drugs and late nights and flashing lights; I want peace and quiet and order; solitude, privacy and space for contemplation. I want to awake at dawn and listen to the birds, and drink a cup of tea. I need to face facts.

None of those cool rock boys — those skinny, pale-skinned beauties you see slouching down the street in their jeans and sunglasses and postcoital mussed and matted hair — are as cool as they seem to the untrained eye. Of course, they won't admit it.

But I have seen the truth. They're not cool, I'm not cool. None of us ever was. We are all secretly freaking out.