and one thing i know is true

There are songs that I come back to. The Animals' We Gotta Get Out Of This Place is one.
It was 1998 when I first heard  this song; I would have been twelve, and just becoming musically aware. It was late one night. Back in those days, 89.1 did a countdown at midnight - maybe not midnight, but late at night - and I stayed up religiously to note down the top five songs in my Little Women notebook. I had that notebook until my last move, the important one. I wish I still had it. The back had an extensive list of my (probably now, in many cases, embarrassing) favourite songs, and  the front had two sets of lists. It had 98.1's Top 5, and Rick Dees and the Weekly Top 40's Top 10.
I know that I could just look all that up online, but it's not the same.
Anyways, I remember re-hiding my notebook under my mattress that night, and lying back down. I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't turn on a light and read because I shared a room with my sister, so I just closed my eyes and listened to the music.

we've gotta get out of this place / if it's the last thing we ever do / 

we've  gotta get out of this place / girl, there's a better life for me and you.

I remember feeling changed after I heard that lyric. Lying in the dark, and feeling, at twelve, as though yes, I do have to get out of this place, and yes, that is okay; no, I am not alone.
And that's the best of rock 'n' roll. The song still sounds amazing, even after close to fifty years, but that's not even the heart of it. It doesn't carry any less weight. It still resonates. It still gives me chills.
Escape is a universal constant.
I've held onto this song through my years of running, and I think I'll keep holding onto it, albeit in a different, more nostalgic way as I grow up and older and into myself and my place. Make a home. I won't forget the things that made me and the songs that shaped me. I won't  forget the songs that made me realise that, for better or worse, I was not alone; even more than that, my feelings weren't unique, they weren't even unique to people living in my decade. People had lived through this, and found a way out and through, and had done so for years.
I made a point of never buying this song in any form because I knew that, when I needed it and whether I realised that or not, I would hear it on the radio. I think I will soon be ready to buy this, and say yes, I am able to need this song and what it means to me, and it is okay to have it now; I do not need to wait for it to have meaning because the meaning is inherent and inseparable from the act of listening to it.
I am coming back to it now because my boyfriend and I have, as they say, gotta get out of this place. It's not so dramatic as trying to get out of the ghetto, but I feel like the message still applies. He's trying to move here, I'm just trying to move out on my own. We want to start a life together. It feels hopeless, but I guess we can't really afford to feel hopeless. The Animals would probably prefer that we don't.
So we'll just keep working for it, for that better life. 

RIP Chas Chandler