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I am an open book. At least, more of an open book than I’ve ever been. In the past, I tried to create a beautiful cover but kept my pages sealed shut. I didn’t want anyone to know what was really happening inside. I lived by the idea that letting someone flip through my pages would cause them paper cuts, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I thought if I kept things to myself, I’d be able to show you what you wanted to see.

These days I’m pages strewn across the floor, words underlined, in bold, highlighted for anyone to see. I’m a large-font, hard-cover novel.

I’ve come to realize that my calling is to be as authentic as I can be. And for me, that means sharing the parts of me that may not look so shiny or glittery or svelte. It means acknowledging my humanness and ditching perfectionistic ideals that are actually rather boring. It means being unapologetic for my wounds. Because as Rumi would say, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

One of those wounds began when I was around 12 or 13 years old. It is a wound I don’t often talk about, not because I am ashamed, but rather because my memory around it pales in comparison to other parts of my life.

Around the age of 12, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. Anorexia nervosa. For someone who loves words and the English language, this was NOT a welcome addition to my vocabulary. It sounded so harsh, so ugly, so medicinal. I liked words like indubitable and superfluous and effervescent. Not anorexia nervosa.

According to the DSM-5 TR, a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa includes the following criteria:

1. Restriction of energy intake relative to requirements leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health.
2. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
3. Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.

I never considered myself overweight. I went through a few years where my cheeks appear a little fuller in pictures, but my family has always been thin and healthy. Growing up, I was always one of the taller girls. Formulating a reason for my eating disorder proves difficult—my ability to peel apart the past gives some insight into what may have been going on at the time, but I don’t know that I can ever really fully understand the subtle nuances that led me to that diagnosis. In other words, I can attempt to provide theories for what led to my eating disorder, but ultimately, I may not ever fully understand the complexity of what caused it; and, truthfully, I’m not sure that it’s all that important.

Causes of anorexia are not well-understood, although studies suggest there may be some genetic pre-disposition and environmental/societal factors that can affect certain people differently than others.

What I remember about my eating disorder is that I created an idea in my head that I was somehow less than because I was larger in frame than my twin sister, Nina.

No one told me this. It was more that I started becoming aware of subtle differences in my sister and me. As a twin, I knew the world only from that perspective—I wasn’t experiencing life on my own, I was seeing it unfold in real-life for my sister. She was a reference, a blueprint, a guidepost to what “should” be happening. As I got older, I started paying more attention to things that set my sister and me apart. I didn’t have to dig deep—people were good at letting me know what they saw. “You look like your mother; your sister takes after your dad!” Or, “this one talks more,” and “that one is pretty shy,” and soon enough, “you’re so much taller than your sister” started to take on more meaning.

I remember clearly at an Indian wedding, maybe a cousin’s, being confronted by a woman who said something along the lines of, “they’re twins? But this one is so much bigger!”

I’m sure there were other things going on in my life at the time, collections of comments I’d gathered and stored in my mind that I used to support this remark, but that wedding stands out as a pivotal turning point when I made a conscious effort to become small.

I can’t tell you why my life took this course, why my brain worked the way it did, but somewhere in my development, I taught myself that I needed to stop growing. I needed to stay small.

In my eating disorder years, I could have told you the exact number of calories and fat grams for every item in our pantry. I spent family dinners calculating math in my head, using precious time with family and friends to stack together the number of calories in my Macaroni Grill salad. I’d easily forego the bread and Shirley Temples I’d enjoyed as a kid. Everything I put into my body mattered. (It’s ironic, now, to think how I went from such a strict gatekeeper of what went into my body to allowing a free flow of alcohol to pour through my veins in later years).

I became obsessed with exercise, too, counting the number of times I went up and down the stairs, ripping out pages from Fitness magazine to collect a binder of workout routines with headlines promising to tone up for summer and shed extra weight in 2 weeks. I vividly remember tracking my belly’s growth (or, in this case, it’s shrinking) against my tub—the way you’d track a child’s height against the doorframe—measuring my worth by how much I displaced the water in my bath. I wanted to see my belly flatten, to track its progress down, to become flush with my hips and legs.

I wanted to disappear.

In some ways, I think my eating disorder started to seep into all aspects of my life. Instead of just disappearing in stature, I started thinking I needed to be small everywhere else, too. I started reigning in that carefree, silly side of me that voiced her imaginations and shimmied in front of any willing audience. I began to conform, to mold, to try to fit in to what I thought others expected of me. I retreated inside my mind, my thoughts catalysts for all sorts of masks I’d put on, drifting farther and farther from the me I knew.

My most honest conversations were held between pen and paper, my journals a safe place to pick apart the different voices in my head. The few moments I let myself go writing, I felt a freedom I couldn’t find anywhere else. I started navigating life in my diaries, opening up in ways I never felt safe to do with another person.

But now. Now I wish I knew then what I know now. That help is accessible, available, affordable. That these stories we tell ourselves are often misguided and that comparison is the thief of joy. That our bodies are our temples, the houses for our souls. Treat them well. Give them grace. Acknowledge the blessings that are so easy to take for granted. Be willing to change your perspective. Be willing to forgive yourself.

There’s so much more to say on this. But for now, this is my step forward into embracing all of me, the years that have shaped me and led me to where I am. The years that have somehow gotten lost in the unfolding, that have been put by the wayside. Here’s my commitment to them: I will not shut the door on you, but I will move forward. I will recognize you as pages in my book that deserve to be told, but that do not define me. I will welcome your story, your lessons, your guidance, and I will always seek to remain an open book.

So much for my resolution to blog once a week. It doesn’t count until January, right?

Here’s to renewing the vow. To my credit, I did have a draft a few weeks ago….

Last month I officially became a resident of Colorado. For the last 34 years of my life, I’ve always called Mississippi my home. It was more “home” as a matter of logistics—I was born in the Magnolia state, lived my entire childhood there and carried a Mississippi driver’s license from the time I was 15 ½ until just last month. Don’t get me wrong—there are many things I will always love about Mississippi—my relationship with the state is quite tangled. I’ve gone from being neutral about my birthplace to trying to become what I thought was the quintessential southerner to fit in, to blaming Mississippi for all my flaws, to back to a more neutral affiliation with the state. I could write a whole post on my relationship with Mississippi.

My parents are not from Mississippi. Not from a state where most seem to come from families that claim residency for generations back.  My parents met in New York City when my father was an Ear, Nose and Throat Medical Resident and my mother found herself in his office as a graduate student at New York University. My father always fast forwards through the story of how they met—he doesn’t have to tell me how professional he was–I already assumed he couldn’t flirt—but when my mother was discharged as his patient, he called to check up on her and the rest is history.

 My father was the second-born son in a traditional Indian family and grew up in Delhi, India. His older brother, Ashok, and he lived with my grandparents in a single room house until he was 16, when his younger brother Manoj was born. Arranged marriages were common when my “Papa” was growing up, and as I’ve been told, my grandparents were in the middle of arranging a marriage with my dad and my grandfather’s boss’ daughter when my father met my mother. You can’t make this stuff up.

 Growing up, I didn’t know many other families that were like mine. My mother is from Indiana (a “Yankee”, according to Mississippi standards) and my father, as mentioned, grew up in India. I often had to clarify that my Indian heritage is different than the Native American Indians that most people readily assumed I was referring to since I share more of my mother’s features. (I have been asked, multiple times, if I am the Indian with the “dot” or the “feather”—these days people are probably [hopefully] more politically correct).

My yoga teacher tells me I’m “sensitive”—she says more than likely, I’ve been taught this was suboptimal. She’s right—I remember high school friends making fun of my natural disposition (and my fashion–although I can now claim I was ahead of my time for knowing high-waisted pants and ankle boots would come back in style.)

I was the girl who opted to lie on the driveway and wish on falling stars, my favorite burnt CD playing in the background. Maybe my sensitivity had something to do with the way I later relied on alcohol to numb my feelings or the duffel bags full of journals that I’m not ready to read without crying at some lost past.

I don’t need Sarah McLaughlin and shelter dogs to be the commercial that breaks me. I tear up when a Friends re-run comes on and I realize that Ross and Rachel are on a break.

I’ve always known I felt things in a big way. One of my earliest memories is me, standing on the driveway of our old house at 282 Northpointe Parkway, waiting for my father, my Papa to come home from work. I was so excited to see him. I love my Papa. I was a daddy’s girl: I wore his big t-shirts and played with his ties and made stick figures of him. And all my stick figures came with one very important, distinguishing feature: a mustache. A few dark zig-zags from a marker was all it took to transform a stick figure into my Papa.

Anyway, I’m standing on the driveway waiting for Papa to come home. I see him pull up in his white Acura car that my sister and I had dubbed “Whitey” (probably not the most politically correct name for a car in this day and age). I remember him putting Whitey in park, rolling down the window, and his face starting to come into view.

I see his dark brown eyes that I love so much, his chubby cheeks, his nose that I like to poke at and…

Wait…. What?! The. Everlovinggoodness.

Something is not right.

Where is the mustache?

My father’s face is looking at me but something is not right. Not right at all.

My Papa is a stick figure with a dark zig zag over his smile. I have never known Papa without a mustache.

I don’t think my father expected such a terrified reaction: a bawling toddler, scared senseless because something happened to Papa’s face.

So, yes. I am quite sensitive. I always have been. I don’t like change.

Maybe that’s partly why I fell in love with alcohol. I learned how to mute the intensity of how strongly I felt things. I never liked being the girl who got so down when a boy rejected her. I didn’t want to come across as “sensitive” or “too much”.  I didn’t want someone else to have the upper hand or have so much power over how I felt. After a glass or two (or five) of wine, I realized that I was in control again. I could push down the memories of rejection, I could become someone else. I was strong, defiant, words bounced off instead of burrowing inside.

In high school, I loved to act. I tried out for every play, and often got some of the top roles. I would transform into a character on stage. I loved not having to be a certain way. I could explore. I could become someone else. I found such safety on stage. I could try different things, be someone else. I didn’t have to keep fitting into the mold that was expected from me. I devoured lines, memorized them until they became my language, I bled into the scenes, I uncovered the character’s past.

Alcohol was like being on stage. I could melt, merge, morph into something else. I could release the parts of me that I didn’t like. I could pick and choose how I wanted to be, who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do. It was like a magic potion. I had an energy I’d never had before. I could say things I’d never said out loud before. I could push away regret, let go of shame, I felt invincible.

Until I didn’t.

Because the magic only works for a short time.

Alcohol was a magic potion until it was the thing that changed me into my worst enemy. The thing that shattered relationships, that put dreams on hold, that made me do things I never would do sober. Alcohol caused me to lose days of my life. Sounds dramatic—maybe you’d say I’m being sensitive­—but you can’t know until you’ve walked this walk. Hopefully you never have to.

Today I’m better. I’ve found community—people that get the “sensitivity,” the reliance on magic potions that no longer work. I’ve found in vulnerability and authenticity that a whole new world exists—one in which life isn’t as scary or foreign or cruel.

I’m still figuring things out—and I have a feeling I always will be—but I know where to go when the going gets rough.

So—to New Year’s Resolutions. I recently read that maybe, instead of a list of “to-do’s,” maybe it’s worthy to make a list of “let go’s.”

My let-go’s:

-Letting go of negative self-talk

-Letting go of any kind of numbing (just because I don’t drink anymore doesn’t mean I don’t numb with Netflix)

-Letting go of over-spending (goodbye, Target and Amazon…at least I’ll try to cut down!)

-Letting go of hiding when things go wrong

 

And, because I’ve always loved a to-do list, my resolutions for this year:

-Start my memoir

-Keep teaching yoga

-Blog once a week!

-Live a life I can be proud of

 

 

Addendum:

My yoga teacher meant my sensitivity was a gift. I forgot that part. I’m beginning to realize the truth in that. That my sensitivity allows me to empathize, to feel, to experience the emotions so raw and natural in life.

Yes, maybe I tear up in Friends re-runs, in Queer Eye episodes (as recent as last night!), when I become invested in a patient… but I’d rather live life this way than go through the motions numbed, oblivious, cut-off. I’d rather experience life on its full-spectrum and find ways to deal with the ache of my sensitivity (recommended options include crystals and sage clearings–a far cry from my Mississippi upbringing but I’ll try it all!)

Sensitivity isn’t a negative word. It simply means “quick to respond to slight changes, signals, or influences.” With this definition of the word, I think us sensitives have a leg up in avoiding serial killers and con-artists. So, I’ll take my sensitivity, I’ll learn to accept it, I’ll embrace it… thank you very much 🙂

 

Well it’s been almost a year since I’ve blogged. But in that year, nothing has felt more true than the fact that I need and want to write. So, to get ahead of New Year’s Resolutions, I’m making a commitment to post once a week.  And with that, here’s part one of my story:

 

When I first started trying to stop drinking, it was other people’s stories that resonated with me more than anything else. At first, I read these stories in the privacy of my one-bedroom apartment in Nashville. My sister had recommended Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle, and I remember sitting on my floor bawling—I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Someone else understood. Someone else had been where I was. And that someone else was now the author of the book that I held between my hands.

I want to share my story because the stories are what saved me. The raw, unfiltered words that told someone else’s story started to lift me out of my brokenness. They infused me with a sense of hope that I had long ago lost, they gave me a possibility that I hadn’t seen before.

If any part of my story can have that same effect on someone else, then the story is worth being told.

Alcohol was never supposed to be my poison. I grew up with parents who rarely drank, no one in my extended family exhibited signs of addiction: I didn’t have an uncle who showed up plastered to Christmas dinner or an aunt who was notorious for slipping vodka into her morning orange juice. These scenarios weren’t even in my imagination; I didn’t know of any friends growing up who struggled with alcoholic parents. “Alcoholism,” or what is more appropriately called alcohol use disorder, was nonexistent. It was something that was supposed to stay in the movies, in the dark alleyways that I couldn’t see from inside my ‘normal’ home.

I was the straight-A student in high-school who was a little bit shy, a little reserved, a little too “good.” I didn’t untuck my shirt or wear skirts that failed the dollar-bill-length test, I handed in all my assignments on time, and I could count on one hand the number of times I tried drinking. For the better part of my freshman year in college, I abstained from alcohol because I just didn’t “get it” and because I thought that staying away from it would help me hang on to the high school boy who also claimed he didn’t drink. I tossed my nose up at parties, opting instead to lie on the floor outside my dorm and talk to that boy for hours on end until he started snoring, thinking this was a sign he was still in love with me.

Then, when I found out that boy had more than one girl who he was falling asleep on the phone with night after night, I threw all abandon to the wind and started dipping my toes into the water that was Natty Light and watered-down margaritas.

And I realized that when I drank, I didn’t care so much about that boy, or what hurt felt like. Because I didn’t feel the hurt as deep. I realized that the sensitive, lying-on-the-driveway-wishing-on-falling-stars, seventeen-year-old girl had a different side to her, a rebel, if you will. This rebel side was feisty, confident, funny, outgoing and took shots faster than the frat boys who gave them to her. She was surface, never letting anything scratch deep, never letting anything feel too much again.

I wore the mask of a rebel well. It became easy to hide underneath this facade and push down the old parts of me. I learned how to become a reflection of what I thought the world wanted me to be. I danced through the streets of Broadway, forgetting the parts of me that longed to be the one writing songs and poems, instead listening to someone else play music while I stood on tiptoes to flag down the bartender at whatever honky tonk I was in.

I lived life in a way I thought was fearless. A way I hadn’t known before. It seemed so much easier to me, not having to feel so much all the time. I didn’t waste my wishes on falling stars. I traded driveways for rooftops and the moonlight for the neon signs of bars. I finally knew how to live.

Until all of that stopped working. Because when you have an addiction, sooner or later, the glitter fades, the curtain draws, and it starts to get pretty dark.

Having an addiction feels like building your own prison, living in its walls, and then realizing you’ve had the keys all along, but you don’t know how to use them. Or, if you do figure out how to use them, the minute you unlock the doors and get free, you do the very same thing that got you behind bars in the first place. And you forget again how to use the damn keys. It’s an endless repetition of the same story.

But, if you’re lucky, maybe you read someone else’s story. Maybe you realize that someone else has done what you’ve done, they’ve woken up to texts they don’t remember sending, became the niece that shows up to Christmas dinner plastered, woke up in the backseat of a cab on their first night out in grad school. And maybe you hear how they started wanting something different from life, and they started asking for help, and they started learning about how this addiction thing isn’t something that only lives in movies or dark alley-ways or other people’s homes. It can creep up suddenly or over years, it can stay swept under the rug for ages and then come flying back out when it’s least expected. But it doesn’t have to be the thing that defines you, or the thing that breaks you or the thing that shuts you down. Maybe it becomes the thing that breaks you open, that pushes you to dig deeper, scratch harder, go beyond the surface. Maybe it can become a story that ends up in someone else’s hands when they need it most. And maybe that’s enough.

Sometimes it feels like the only place that’s ever felt like home is the road.

I drove up to Northern Colorado this weekend to see my mother and her longtime friends. I found myself not wanting the 1 ½ hours on the open road to end. In my car, my foot heavy on the gas, it’s not that I find my thoughts still. Rather, it’s here that my thoughts become poetry, it’s where I undo my mistakes and find hope for the future. Where I forgive myself for the past and where I feel most present.

I drive with an open sunroof and songs. Songs I’ve heard and songs that are new. They remind me of what it means to live. I feel most alive when a lyric tells my story. When I find myself in the words of a melody. I hit replay until the edges soften, until the meaning settles in and I know what I’m meant to figure out.

The things I love most in this world right now are my dog and my guitar. Both of which are biding time back home in Mississippi. I ache for the familiarity of holding both, of feeling love in a way I’ve never known before.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m capable of being loved. The walls I build are thick, tall, protective. I don’t know how to allow that vulnerability again when the hurt from years ago still lingers. I could tell tales of what I’ve been through, but they wouldn’t make sense. It wouldn’t make sense, how these things hit me so hard. I feel more than I wish I did.

When I take risks, I feel rejected. It’s why I still live with walls.

On the road I do not have to be anything but myself. I don’t have to wear the walls. I can wear my hair loose or secured under a ball cap. I can get drunk on caffeine and the highway. I can sing too loud and out of key. I can remember things from the past, like my college roommate and the way our friendship ripped apart without my permission. I can remember the boy from high school that taught me about love and broken hearts and the grief of unexpected accidents. I can use the taillights of 18-wheelers to steer me toward the next exit, and here, I can finally breathe.

I will always remember the sting of rejection, the way a sunrise can hold grief and longing and hope all at once. I will always remember old friends, new homes, and the way it feels to blow out 30 some candles. I will always live for today and try to make tomorrow better. I will always love the way a lyric can tell my story. I will always remember the way the road feels like home.

 

For years, I’ve spent money on a website I don’t attend to. Too stubborn to lose hope in the idea that one day, I would be consistent. Write blogs daily..at the very least, weekly. My intention, always, to reach even just one person who needs to feel less alone.

But my own fears keep me away. Fears of being vulnerable, fears that I’ve “let writing go,” fears that I’m baring my soul without it meaning a thing.

I turned 34 last week. The first birthday I spent alone, in a new(ish) city. Sure-there’s been many recent birthdays where the only companions were my parents, but at least I had them. Or a dog or two to help lick the icing off the candles.

I don’t say this to evoke pity. Quite the contrary-I loathe pity. Rather, I say it to validate that even though I had no plans, no birthday dinner, no friends to light candles on a cake I never had, I still felt ok. And for me, that is something.

I’ve spent so much of my life–at least, recent years–wallowing in self-pity. Feeling angry at the wreckage I caused in my addiction, ashamed of the years I felt I’d wasted. Feeling like I’m “less than”–holding myself up to the standards I’d set of how life should go.

With social media, it can be hard to not compare yourself. I see high school friends, college friends, grad-school friends traveling the world. Getting engaged, having babies. Surrounded by friends. Going on bachelorette trips, reuniting with old friends in new hometowns, guzzling champagne with scenic backgrounds, eyebrows meticulously plucked/shaped/whatever-the-hell-it-is-they-do.

I guess if I’m being honest, a part of me saw myself having these same experiences. I saw myself in friends’ weddings, catching bouquets, eyeing the cute groomsmen. I saw myself at after-work functions, a glass (always) in my hand, the image that validated you had made it. The eyebrows that said you can afford it. 

But I’m seeing myself differently these days. I’m seeing myself as a little girl again, curious about the world. Unashamed of wanting to go to bed early. Unashamed of crying because something hurts. Unashamed of finding the answers to all my questions in books, in words, in the way the lyrics to a song are my prayers.

I know now that the pictures we post don’t tell the whole story. Images only convey the moment in time.

I’m more privy to the words.

The ways words can simplify, yet amplify, the feelings we feel as humans. The emotions we go through as we grow. The things we think we know, but are still learning.

I made a vow to myself, to the little girl inside of me who always loved to write, that I will write a book. I will tell the stories of my life that want to be told. If no one listens, that is ok. But if some body, just one person, chooses to read my experiences and gains just one ounce of relief knowing they are not alone–then I will know my intuition to write, that thing inside of me I cannot push down, will finally be at peace.

Stay tuned. More, as always, to come.

I’ve been wondering for a while what it is I am supposed to do on this earth. The conclusion I’ve come to, is that the answer to that is ever evolving, ever-changing, and so there is no point to which I can direct my steering. What I can do, however, is share what I feel, what I see, what I find about life in the journeys I take, the paths I cross, the waters I swim. I can share my experiences because if I can’t learn from them, maybe someone else can.

I’m journeying into a new unknown. Uprooting my life again and trying something else on. I’ve been trying to figure out what I need to be but all that is doing is making me unaware of what I need to feel.

I feel scared. Fearful of what chances I won’t take. Fearful of the chances I will take. Scared of letting go of what I’ve known for so long and trying to allow it to be something else. Surrendering to the chaos of the unbroken.

How can you live if you feel that you are meant to shatter?

Maybe the shattering is the beginning of something new. Split glass shows a different scenery than a mirror. Different perspectives, different views, different reflections.

Maybe in the shattered glass I can see myself whole again.

Lately I’ve been dreaming about college. Dorm rooms and moving, packing up boxes and splitting them open. Odd, because college was 10 years ago now. Odd, because I don’t feel 10 years older.

I changed a lot during college. Who hasn’t? We go from being dependent on parents, living under strict rules and family dynamics to being independent, living in dorm rooms with strangers, taking classes with peers from all over the world, discovering the freedom of alcohol and tailgates and entering a world where previous rules seem to fade away.

Growing up, I  don’t think I knew who I really was—as a twin, I was known as half of a whole,–always compared. Who was the smallest, the smartest, the prettiest. People comment on their opinions without realizing the consequences it has on a young girl. My sister and I attended the same private school from kindergarten through senior year. We grew up with the same boys we learned cursive with, shared lunch with the same girls we shared our first crushes with. It was a small town where everyone knows you, where if you’re smart at something or adept at some sport you have a name. You’re someone. And then, in college, I entered this world where no one knew me as a twin, as a part; I could create whatever story I wanted. I stumbled at first. I latched onto a boy—that boy from high school that I thought was the answer to all my insecurity. The one that finally made me feel like my own person. He was a year younger than me, so college meant the forced break up of our relationship, though in hindsight I think for him it was a way out. I held back on living because I couldn’t see life without him, even though I knew deep down that he had no intention of following through with his promises. I was entertainment, a game, something he could easily toss aside and pick back up whenever he wanted. And to his credit, it was because I allowed him that.

But after I found alcohol, he took a backseat. I had finally found the solution to all my embarrassment, my low self-esteem, the timidity that I hated about myself. With alcohol, I became the life of the party, someone who could easily start a conversation with anyone, even with the cute D1 baseball player at Vanderbilt, a school notorious for its baseball program. In my eyes, I was finally a catch. I was invincible; nights were magical—the elixir of alcohol mixing with my newfound freedom, living as as independent, an adult, someone detached from all the labels I had grown up with. The live music of Broadway became the background soundtrack to my new life. I catapulted up onto stages, singing into the microphones with a voice over-sold with cheap liquor. I took shots from strangers, never questioning who was handing me my drink, as long as it numbed whatever noise was chattering in my head. I strutted with purpose in heels I had no balance for, my dress riding up, my lipstick fading with the stars. At the time I still had the wherewithal to make it home safely, somehow—there were nights I’d trek the lonely stretch from Broadway all the way back to campus, some boy blowing up my phone. I’d collapse in my bed with my shoes still on, makeup running down my face, my dreams mixing with whatever had happened that night. Sometimes I’d wake up with remorse, but more often I’d shake off the night and convince myself this was normal. That all college girls flirted with danger, that this was my right, my coming of age.

Sometimes I look back on those years with shame, embarrassment, self-loathing. Living an entitled, privileged life, self-absorbed, the world at my fingertips, taking what I had for granted, using those around me as pawns in my game. I didn’t ever do it intentionally, but with time comes knowledge and the loss of ignorant bliss. I may have been numbing my own little traumas, but the childhood cards I were dealt were a winning hand. I’ve learned a lot about self-forgiveness, self-love—all the ingredients necessary before you can become a force for the greater good—but there is still a part of me that wants to scream out—none of this makes sense! There’s no clear justification for the road I took, the line I crossed, how I chose poor coping mechanisms to deal with whatever pain came into my life. There’s been times I’ve longed for a scapegoat—something from my past to blame for the ways I’ve unleashed destruction on those around me. One thing I do know, however, is that staying stuck in the past helps no one. I can choose to move on and learn and grow, or I can choose to wallow in my mistakes—the choice is always mine to make.

In sobriety there is almost a re-birth. A re-experiencing of all the human emotions, because for years and years there was the numbing, the shoving away, sweeping under the rug. All at once you re-learn what grief is—the sting of it enveloping your chest, freezing your movements, the shock and the lump in your throat. You relearn joy—the lightness, the feeling of floating, the way you perceive things as if seeing them for the first time. You re-experience anger and irritation, loneliness and freedom, confidence and pride. Sometimes the emotions feel like too much, like you just need to press pause on the world so you can process things one at a time. Too often they come in floods—when it rains, it pours. And you have a choice to make—to experience the pouring in all its glory, or to pick up and numb again.

Sometimes I want to numb again. I want to feel the way I felt in college. The nonchalance, the way I could brush off one night full of debauchery as if it was nothing, reinvent myself as a new week dawned, create whatever story I wanted to sell to the world. Sometimes I want to re-live Tuesdays in a crowded Sports-bar haggling the Joe strumming guitar because in my inebriated state I believed I could steal the show. Sometimes I want to feel that sequined top again, the way it hung on my bloated body, youth doing its job of hiding those imperfections, because when you’re twenty those choices haven’t yet caught up. I want to feel some stranger’s arms around me, be persuaded that I was the prettiest girl in the room, letting his lines lure me in, blunting the heartbreak of high school and what I thought was love. Sometimes I want to feel the wind on my face as I climbed the fence into the baseball stadium at midnight, running the bases with the boy I stole, our hearts beating too fast from rum and cokes. Sometimes I want to feel that rebellion, before it became a prison, before it threatened everything I’d worked so hard to have.

Maybe right now it’s enough to reflect on the memories, to realize their impact on the person I am today. Maybe right now it’s enough to accept time for what it is, lines for what they are and how they get crossed and blurred and the consequences I learn to live with when that happens.

Maybe it’s enough to write about and share, knowing that there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this living. Maybe it’s enough to just be where I am right now.

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

I look at this question today from a different lens than I did as a child. First of all, do you ever really grow up? I know I am still growing. For me, growth means change, and change is constant.

 

My mom recalls teachers asking parents this question: “What does your child want to be when they grow up?” at a parent teacher conference, probably sometime around my kindergarten years. She remembers the proud parents whose children wanted to grow up to be doctors, lawyers, astronauts, teachers, even the President of the United States. And she remembers when it came her time to answer, all she could say was the truth: “My daughter wants to be a country music singer.”

 

I don’t know when in life I fell in love with country music, but I have memories: walking down the hallway of that house on Northpointe Parkway with a CD player and headphones too big for my ears, belting Alan Jackson’s “Tall, Tall Trees;” years later, car windows rolled down, Rascal Flatts’ lyrics left to be swallowed up by the rush of wind passing by. I remember Shania Twain and Garth Brooks singing me to sleep. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw painting pictures of what I dreamed my life would look like someday. And in college, Taylor Swift, her stories paralleling the heartbreaks I endured—her lyrics giving voice to what I felt I needed to say. In exactly the right way.

 

The beauty of music to me lies in the lyrics. I’ve always been a sucker for words. And there’s a gift that songwriters have, to take a simple phrase and hold within it a whole universe of meaning.

 

Like Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne and Miranda Lambert’s “Vice”:

 

“ All dressed up in a pretty black label / Sweet salvation on a dining room table / Waiting on me / Where the numb meets the lonely / It’s gone before it ever melts the ice”

 

 

Where the numb meets the lonely….

 

And then, how a song can turn a phrase on its head and give it a whole new meaning. Like in Carly Pearce, Josh Osborne and Natalie Nicole Hemby’s “Easy Going”:

 

“You made it easy to love ya / Easy to get lost in your lies / The way you kept it undercover / Made me fall harder every time / Now that it’s all out, out in the open / You made it so easy going”

 

(Did anyone catch the “get lost in your lies” play too?)

 

These are the things I latch onto, the things that I feel drawn to, where I sense something beyond just music and words. There’s a connection there, a relatability, an understood reminder that “you are not alone.”

 

Most recently I came across one of Lauren Alaina’s newest songs, which she co-wrote with Hillary Lindsey, called “It Was Me.” There’s something about hearing a song for the first time, when that song seems like it was written for you, that shoots like electricity, that demands your attention, that invites you in and allows you to heal. If I could offer an apology, it’s in this song.

 

 

I’ve driven from my hometown in Mississippi to Nashville countless times, mostly during my college years. There was so much growth that happened on those drives. So much change. Six hours of country music playing on my stereo. Six hours mulching through the lyrics, drawing parallels to my life, trying to figure out my role in the heartbreaks I’d endured, trying to figure out the patterns that kept appearing in my life, trying to rationalize and justify the decisions I was making. The boy I kept running back to. The career I wasn’t sure I wanted. The past that kept following me, mixing into my present, confusing me with all the timelines and the distances and the supposed-to-be’s and the have-been’s. I just kept driving up I-55 and east on I-40, then back again, my wheels collecting dust and fumes, my CDs scratching and turning and repeating over and over and over again.

In between the drives were the nights on Broadway, the fancy dresses and winter coats at the CMA awards. The bright neon lights of downtown, the last calls, the rooftops where I made promises and stole kisses, where I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, where I hid from what I was becoming. I acted as though I didn’t care, stumbling on stages and singing karaoke to songs I’d once listened to as that child longing for the bright lights of the Opry. I made friends with strangers, collecting happiness like it was something I could store and use later on when the music was long gone. A distant melody or some far off echo.

 

Now it’s my turn. No, I wasn’t blessed with a voice that stands out, or even one that stays on tune. And no, I don’t have the dexterity and built up callouses required to seamlessly strum a guitar. But what I do have is the experience. The struggles and lessons, the memories, the nostalgia, the journals that kept track of all those drives back and forth from Mississippi to Tennessee. What I have is the desire to turn my heartache into art, with the hopes that one day the way I speak will touch someone else who needs to be heard and hasn’t yet found their voice.