Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (Audio)

 

Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water album was released on January 26, 1970. The title single was also released that same month. As their final studio album, it topped the charts for 10 weeks in the US and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. 

Clinging to a Bridge Over Troubled Water

I was just shy of fifteen when Bridge Over Troubled Water drifted into my life. I was a confused, headstrong teenager, certain I understood love.

I didn’t.

I fell for the boy I would marry—and stayed with for twenty-two years in a life that never quite fit. I stayed for my daughters. I stayed because I was agoraphobic. I stayed because I believed I couldn’t leave.

Until 1992, when I had no choice.

It took three years to end it on paper, and far longer to quiet the ache of regret. I think now I carried a touch of Cinderella Syndrome—waiting for something to transform that never would. Betrayal came, more than once, and each time it hollowed something out in me.

I was devastated when it finally broke.

But somewhere in that breaking, I found a kind of bridge.

Not a person. Not a rescue.
Something quieter.

A thin, trembling strength that carried me forward when I was sure I couldn’t move at all.

I didn’t cross it beautifully. I crossed it barely.

But I crossed.

And sometimes, that is the miracle—
not that we are saved,
but that we survive.