The music moved through me, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

DJ Mary Lucia was back at The Current, after a seven month hiatus from the radio station. Lucia took a leave because she was being relentlessly stalked by a local man. According to The Star Tribune, “the case against her stalker is still pending.”

The first song Lucia spun was “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty. Her song was a statement. She was there to rock. Stalker be damned.

I missed that first song, but started listening a bit after. I heard her play the song “Respectable” by The Rolling Stones. This chorus of this song states, “Get out of my life… Don’t come back.”

Her playlist was defiant, but she was also humble and grateful. She said,

“Let’s talk about real friends and what real friends are. I tend to isolate myself a little bit. I’m not a big friend collector. I’m lucky I have a small group of really good friends. Do you let these people see the real darkness some times? They might run away. I’ve been so lucky to have people from my life who’ve done just the opposite. They did not run away. They ran to me.” -From The Star Tribune

There are moments when you hear just the right song. There are moments when someone says the exact thing you need to hear. This was one of those moments for me.

I wasn’t dealing with anything nearly as horrible as Lucia. Mine was a more mundane heartbreak.

But her words hit a chord inside me. I wasn’t alone in my suffering. She was suffering too, but she wove her pain into a series of guitar crashes and fuck you chorus lines.

My tears never breached the space between eye and cheek. I soon found myself tapping my toe and smiling. I missed Mary.

And now here she was, saving me song by song.

This week’s video is “The Next Storm” by Frank Turner.