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When people ask me what made me move to Colorado, I usually give them either the short-version answer, or the long-version answer, depending on the situation.

The short-version answer is: I wanted to get out of Mississippi.

Most people nod to this, as if to say, “that makes sense,” which, although I’m the one throwing shade at my home state, makes me slightly defensive inside. (But that’s a whole other blog post for a different time).

The long-version answer ultimately supports the short-version. It leaves out a lot of details, but starts by saying:

I grew up in Mississippi even though my parents aren’t from there, and when I went to college, I never thought I’d end up back there. Then, even though this IS the ‘long’ version, I say, Long-story-short, I ended up back in Mississippi during COVID to live with my parents. And ends with, Once the pandemic started easing up, I started considering where to live—most of my friends are spread throughout the U.S., so there’s not one city where I have a big community. My sister lives in LA, so I narrowed it down to LA (California) and Colorado. Colorado won because I wanted to experience the seasons.

And usually, people asking me the question understand that answer. Because usually the people asking that question also live here, and understand that every Colorado season brings enough beauty to make anyone want to stay.

Truth is, neither the long nor the short-version of my answer as to why I moved to Colorado tells the whole story. And it’s not so much that I am trying to hide the real story as it is that the story is just too complex to tell. It’s a story I’m still figuring out. Some days it seems like I closed my eyes and pointed a spot on the map, fueled up the car, and left. Other days I recognize my inherent instinct to try to find a place that feels like home, when for so long, I’ve felt my foundation toppling underneath me.

I think Nashville was the first city where I started laying down my own bricks. It didn’t happen right away—I made fast friends with the highway and the stretch of road between Vanderbilt and my parents’ home in Flora, Mississippi my freshman year of college. It felt like at that time, my drive was my home itself, interstate 40 to interstate 55. That six-hour drive, within the walls of my Honda CRV, was where I started scratching my own pencil marks, measuring my change as if I were measuring my height. I used songs to determine how much I’d grown, how much I’d changed. If I could get through certain lyrics without skipping ahead, then I knew I was ‘stronger’—less fragile, farther from the freshman girl making that first drive away from home.

When the highway and the stereo didn’t need to cradle me anymore, I allowed Nashville to be my home. I became familiar with certain neighborhoods, mostly based on the bar scenes. I laid my bricks in Midtown, Downtown, Demonbreun Street. The neon lights started feeling like beacons calling me home. Strangers became family thanks to overly-sweet shots and bottles I emptied at my lips.

In my early twenties, I felt certain that Nashville would be my home, the place I’d settle down, grow my roots, lusting for the freedom of college to last forever.

I graduated Vanderbilt in 2012 and immediately moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to pursue my Doctorate in Physical Therapy at Emory University. I never let myself get too grounded in Atlanta, afraid that if I planted roots, I wouldn’t be able to go back to Nashville. Looking back, perhaps this is partly why I held potential relationships at an arm’s length’s distance away, why I built walls around me, never letting anyone get too close.

Atlanta was temporary—I saw it as a chance to solidify my love for Nashville. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I did miss my alma mater and the honky-tonks of Music City so much that I made frequent trips back to Nashville during graduate school to re-live some of my past. To reassure Downtown and Midtown that I would be coming back. To make sure they were missing me as much as I missed them.

But something started happening in Atlanta that would uproot my plans. That would force me to press pause on my brick-laying and reconsider if Nashville would become my home.

I navigated a new life in Atlanta with the blueprint of how to live that I’d developed in college: Study hard, play harder. (At least, that was what I told myself I was doing, when the reality is I was trying to run away from feelings that were too much for me to bear).

My weeks were filled with cadaver dissections and classroom lectures, and I found myself assuming the very sedentary posture and lifestyle I was studying how to fix. Fridays became the light at the end of the tunnel—happy hours at the Mexican restaurant nearby, the tequila running through vessels whose names I’d learned earlier that day. I’d cajole whoever was playing live music to let me have the microphone, and for some reason they let me sing, despite the off-key pitch and slurred words I belted from the stage. Perhaps it was partly knowing that Atlanta would not be my home that allowed me to become so brazen, so bold in my nights out on the town. I figured, it’s a big city, I can blend in– no one will remember me, and thought, I can always run away if I make a mess of things.

But I forgot that you can’t run away from yourself.

At first it was easy to write off some nights as just having overdone things. Wanting to blow off steam from a grueling week of graduate school seemed ‘normal’. Sometimes things went too far, but that was only sometimes. At least, it was for everyone else.

My sometimes became every time, and even though I knew what was to blame (my party-of-one pre-game before the pregame), I couldn’t seem to stop myself from being that girl—the girl with all her messy secrets that were spilling out into the open and creating slippery hazards for anyone walking nearby.

Eventually, my actions warranted an intervention. And though at the time I met the concern and conversation with denial and rebellious frustration, I look back on this time and know how lucky I was to have friends that cared.

They cared enough to ruffle feathers, to sit with discomfort, to say something needs to change.

I wish it would’ve been as easy as that: a come-to-Jesus moment where all of a sudden everything clicks and I find out that the line I crossed had dashes—spaces I could easily cross back over.

But I lacked the courage to peel back my blindfold and see what alcohol was doing to me and those around me. In my narrow view of the world, I was the victim, misunderstood, and the problem wasn’t me—it was everything “happening” to me. Including, I believed, living in Atlanta. I didn’t belong in Atlanta. My real home was Nashville. And, if I could just make it back there, everything would be ok.

Graduation came and went and the thing I remember the most is that I didn’t get to drink champagne.

I moved back home to Mississippi to start a Sports Physical Therapy Residency—another deviation in my plan to get back to Nashville. But, I figured, it was only a year. And with the stability of living at home, I convinced myself that all the messiness that had started to creep up in Atlanta would finally dissolve—that I’d be able to re-group, reset, start again.

But when you sweep the mess under the rug, it always finds its way back out.

I used to think my year back home should have woken me up. Should have lit a fire in me to change. The alarm bells were impossible to ignore, the red flags waving in broad daylight. But denial sits deep—it seems to penetrate into your bones, dissolve into your bloodstream, rest in your heart.

So, even though my foundation was crumbling, I set my sights back on Nashville, thinking those bricks I laid years ago could still hold me up. I moved back to Tennessee in 2017, restless and like a rebel on a mission. I felt that too much time had been lost, so I needed to catch up—make a home for myself here. This, after all, was the place that had saved me. That had made me. That had seen me morph from a child into an adult. This was the place of magic –of freedom and endless nights, of loose responsibilities and even looser inhibitions. I stomped my feet into the ground, forcing the soil to accept me as its own. I dug my fingers into the grass, praying that it would remember me.

But the magic I’d known in college started to turn sour—like a fruit sitting out too long it had rotted. I tried stepping back into the bars that not too long ago had felt like home, but they felt different, staler, and less like home. I didn’t know how to navigate the friendships I had in college—the ones I know were so much more than just about drinking, but which felt at that time, like everything else, like they were only about drinking. I know now that drinking had become such an intrinsic part of my life–I was always thinking about drinking, so it seemed like everyone else must be, too.

And so, I started to isolate, to withdraw and live life from my one-bedroom apartment. Yes, it was in Nashville, the home I so wanted for myself, but it could have been anywhere else. I ate dinner at my coffee table with Netflix drowning out the sounds of the city below. I kept the shades drawn to keep out the skyline I’d become so familiar with over the years. I made a home in the loneliest place I could. And I drank.

That year, I learned that loneliness is harder than anger. That loneliness carries a pain so wrenching, you’ll do anything to make it stop. Including doing the very thing that’s causing the loneliness, because you’ve confused it for a solution. It’s like pouring salt on an open wound and expecting it not to sting.

But sometimes the sting is what you need. The sting forced me to ask for help. It forced me to let go of my conviction that Nashville needed to be my home. It made me take off my blindfold and look a little bit wider.

The sting softened my attitude toward Mississippi, and allowed me to come home (once again) to the place I grew up. Though I balked at being an adult living under my parents’ roof, my hesitancy to do so soon turned into a deep gratitude that I was fortunate enough to start to heal.

Mississippi wasn’t my choice of home at the time, but I started planting roots there for the first time of my own volition. As an adult, I came to know my home town through new eyes, and formed a family in rooms where I admitted my deepest secrets and shame to strangers, only to be accepted exactly for who I was, who I am, and who I was becoming.

When I broadened my perspective, I started realizing my home may ebb and flow. That I may not ever find a place, a geographical solution to my gypsy heart. But I’m starting to realize that home, for me, may be a little less tangible. That my home already has a foundation that I carry with me wherever I go. So in 2023, with renewed confidence and, yes, a desire to experience the seasons, I moved to Boulder, Colorado.

The bricks I get to lay down are bricks I’ve had with me for a long time. They are the bricks from my grandparents that I started accumulating in India and Indiana. They are the Christmases with my American family and the jet-lagged cups of chai with my Indian family. They are the letters my mother would send in my lunchboxes, up until I was a senior in high school. They are my father’s confusing jokes and the way he says his “W’s”. Home is my sister and the hours of make-believe we played as kids, the trails we walked and the secret gardens we ran through. Home is the friendships I’ve made over the years—the friends that cared enough to sit in the discomfort, the friends that care enough to not let my demons be too great a distance between us. And home is the friends I meet for an hour in rooms where we claim anonymity, but where, for us, being anonymous to each other is the furthest thing from the truth.

So for now, when someone asks me why I made Colorado my home, I know my answer may not paint the whole picture. I may have to stick to the answer that I just needed a change of scenery. And that probably will be enough to satisfy their inquiry. But the long version is: I’m still building my home…and I’m not sure exactly where I may land. But what I do know is wherever I go, I’ve got a rock solid foundation on which to lay my bricks.  

 

 

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.