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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.

 

 

The other day I got to briefly catch up with my third grade teacher. I had run into her husband at a workout class and he invited me to meet up with him and my teacher at a nearby restaurant. it’s funny how life works, how time ebbs and flows and reunites us with the people that helped pave our path. This particular teacher always thought I’d be a writer. Sometimes it helps to go back to the people who knew you before life happened, before you started conforming and losing sight of what makes you YOU. As a child I filled diaries, etched pages with my memories, with my thoughts and inner most feelings. I lived life through those pages, my fonts changing with my age, the feathered stroke of my pen turning to angry flicks in high school. I fell in love in those pages, grappled with my eating disorder, memorialized where I was during 9/11. I learned how to hold grudges, how to forgive, how to own up to mistakes. I mourned the loss of a classmate, the ink smudging with my tears. I shed all my secrets in my writing, I allowed myself to let loose the lies I’d accumulated to protect my ego. I allowed myself to breathe. But somewhere along the way I started second-guessing myself. Is there any worth in the way I arrange words? Will anyone want to listen to what I have to say? Will sharing my stories help someone or only expose my flaws? Am I a writer or just someone who writes?

All I know for sure is that I learn best about who I am through my writing. I am able to sort through my thoughts, to make sense of the noise in my head. When I write I feel connected to something greater than me, what some call a “higher power,” what some call “God.” To create is to heal, to create is to connect with Source, to create is to find purpose. Maybe my teacher thought I’d be a writer because she could sense that I found some sort of purpose through my writing. Maybe she believed in me before I could believe in myself.

Teachers come in different forms. In the heartaches of a broken relationship. In the loneliness of a fractured friendship. In the shared connection with a stranger. I am grateful for all the teachers in my life, for their ability to see me through a different lens, to point me on my path, to support me in my dreams. I am grateful for all life has to teach me. And I am grateful that I have my writing to help me learn and grow.

I feel like I keep searching for something, but I don’t know what I’m searching for. It’s like the feeling of walking into a room and forgetting what I was going to get. I had a reason for going in there in the first place, but all of a sudden I can’t remember what I was looking for. That’s how I feel every day lately. I’m searching aimlessly. I’m craving direction, guidance, clarity. I’m coloring in the lines of the shapes that are handed down to me but I feel like there are other shapes I’m missing. I’m doing the motions but where am I going?

 

Over the years I have come to believe that the answer lies within. I know this intellectually. The problem I still face is that despite knowing this intellectually, I do not yet understand it emotionally. And I believe that is the key –being able to feel, to realize, to accept. There is no guidebook or black and white lettering to tell me the HOW, which is what I desperately crave. I keep wanting someone or something to lead me, to give me the bulleted steps, to hand me a manual and say this is how it is done. But it’s something I believe now is done with the heart, not the head. My head thinks it can figure anything out. It prides itself on analyzing thoughts and behaviors, grouping patterns together. My head believes that things can be solved as long as they can be seen, felt, heard. Sensed. My heart, on the other hand, this is where I falter. My heart relies on something beyond the senses. A discovery within that I have not yet learned, because I am so used to learning with my head. A process of feeling, allowing, accepting, surrendering, revisiting, unraveling, unpeeling. These are the steps I need to take, and the things I am searching for. This is the journey I am on.

There are times when, at an utter loss to do anything else, I find I must write.

So often is this the case when issues arise concerning my other home, India, because while born on American soil, my heart bleeds a mixture of Indian and American blood.

 

My father’s oldest brother, my Uncle Ashok, passed away after a long struggle with COVID-19. I understand now the feelings of helplessness family members grapple with watching their loved ones fight against such an isolating virus. I understand it on two dimensions—the helplessness of not being able to be at your loved one’s bedside coupled with the helplessness of hearing the news of loss from a distance that spans an ocean.

 

I will never understand the bravery, the courage, the inundation of emotions that must have consumed my father and his family when he made the choice to settle in America with hopes of giving back to those he loved . What I do understand is the way my father’s heart still lives in India, his home country, the way his smile relaxes and his whole body lightens when his feet touch Delhi clay. Because my heart also lives in India, my smile too is echoed on the faces of those with darker skin than I, my body too lightens as the scents of spices, masala, chai, cumin, turmeric, cardamom waft through the air that is composed of the same matter as the air I breathe in Mississippi. It is like when I was born my roots embedded themselves in both countries—India and America—and so I still feel the tug toward my Eastern home, I still feel a sense of displacement when I am not there.

 

My Uncle Ashok will be remembered for his gentle humbleness, his easy humor, his compassion and dutiful and loyal heart. I think fondly of trips to India as a child, seeing Ashok and my other family in the airport. I think of chai in cups and hot matthis, the salty and crumbly snack my grandmother made. I think of rooftops on buildings with my cousins, flowers in cracked pots and Delhi fog blurring the horizon. I think of my Uncle the first time I tried pan from a roadside stand, its bitter leaf staining my palm. I think of his sideways hugs, his large framed glasses, his soothing voice and the unmistakable resemblance to my father, the unmistakable resemblance to myself–confirming our place as Anands in this world, a name which stems from the Sanskrit word for bliss.

 

And so, Ashok Anand, it is not with sorrow but with bliss that I remember your life. It is not with pain but with joy that I celebrate your soul passing from this life into the next. And it is not goodbye, but rather “see you on the other side”, where no amount of ocean or miles can separate us from one another.