Try as I may to abandon my blog and all the pre-teen implications it brings, I just can't help but write. It's somehow in my nature - I can't express myself without it. I think in writing and when I have nowhere to release it, it goes to waste. My words and the memories I can conjur and re-live, they are all lost if I don't document them somehow. Even if it means returning to the fad of online journals, then I will unashamedly return.
So allow me a moment, despite your likely apathy, to just remember and write.
Today it's rainy and cloudy and I love it. Days like this remind me of the morose side of me that was created through manipulation and hurt. The side I was glad to leave when it was time, but the side that gave me some of the most beautiful words I've ever written and allowed me a love affair with music that has proved irreplaceable.
It was a day like this in October of 2004 that I first listened to Ryan Adams' album called Demolition. Cold, overcast, perfect for a record like that. It takes me back to road trips and days that I once thought were filled with the best things in life, but looking back I realize they were the loneliest days of my life. "Sorry 'bout the every kiss, every kiss you wasted bad. I think the thing you said was true, I'm gonna die alone and sad." I listened to that song a lot those days.
That album started it all. My deep loyalty to Ryan Adams and listening to his music non-stop. Little did I know that losing myself in those songs would only let my mind subconsciouly associate them with the bad memories, letting my thoughts slip back to sophomore year when it seemed like I had everything and then I started to panic and fall apart.
I got to work this morning and, thanks to the clouds, put on Cold Roses. It was summer 2005 when that record came out, but it hurt like hell and felt like the longest winter of my life. I went to Colorado with my mom and sisters and was too skinny because I was too alone to eat. I never thought I'd survive that summer - the summer of laying on the cold tile floor crying because I couldn't take it. The summer of nauseous uncertainty and white knuckled grasping for nothing. The summer I cut myself once and swore never to do it again, because I wouldn't let that bastard make me hurt myself anymore. My family loved me and my friends loved me and I was stronger because of the hurt. "I 'aint afraid of hurt. I've had so much it feels like normal to me now. I'm alone and I'm dancing with you now, in your old room in your old house..."
I got over those days a long time ago, but there's a side of me that exists deep down that just can't forget what it feels like to be hurt. I don't think about it much, but when I do, it all comes flooding back and I can't help but think about how those days of anxiety and mistrust made a difference in how I am now. I wish I could forget sometimes - forget and never think about it again. But hurt like that never goes away.
Days like this will always remind me of Bryan College. Of walking to class on foggy mornings with a cup of coffee, too little sleep and nappy hair. Those days of anticipating my life as a wife, of living with my best friends and feeling like an adult and having it all together. I'm still, after ten months, in a stage of adjusting from living in the south where I'm comfortable to calling a Lake Michigan town home. I live here, I work here and I embrace that. But there's a part of me that will be down south, in that place that has so many of my growing up years, my tears, my laughs and my memories.
So allow me a moment, despite your likely apathy, to just remember and write.
Today it's rainy and cloudy and I love it. Days like this remind me of the morose side of me that was created through manipulation and hurt. The side I was glad to leave when it was time, but the side that gave me some of the most beautiful words I've ever written and allowed me a love affair with music that has proved irreplaceable.
It was a day like this in October of 2004 that I first listened to Ryan Adams' album called Demolition. Cold, overcast, perfect for a record like that. It takes me back to road trips and days that I once thought were filled with the best things in life, but looking back I realize they were the loneliest days of my life. "Sorry 'bout the every kiss, every kiss you wasted bad. I think the thing you said was true, I'm gonna die alone and sad." I listened to that song a lot those days.
That album started it all. My deep loyalty to Ryan Adams and listening to his music non-stop. Little did I know that losing myself in those songs would only let my mind subconsciouly associate them with the bad memories, letting my thoughts slip back to sophomore year when it seemed like I had everything and then I started to panic and fall apart.
I got to work this morning and, thanks to the clouds, put on Cold Roses. It was summer 2005 when that record came out, but it hurt like hell and felt like the longest winter of my life. I went to Colorado with my mom and sisters and was too skinny because I was too alone to eat. I never thought I'd survive that summer - the summer of laying on the cold tile floor crying because I couldn't take it. The summer of nauseous uncertainty and white knuckled grasping for nothing. The summer I cut myself once and swore never to do it again, because I wouldn't let that bastard make me hurt myself anymore. My family loved me and my friends loved me and I was stronger because of the hurt. "I 'aint afraid of hurt. I've had so much it feels like normal to me now. I'm alone and I'm dancing with you now, in your old room in your old house..."
I got over those days a long time ago, but there's a side of me that exists deep down that just can't forget what it feels like to be hurt. I don't think about it much, but when I do, it all comes flooding back and I can't help but think about how those days of anxiety and mistrust made a difference in how I am now. I wish I could forget sometimes - forget and never think about it again. But hurt like that never goes away.
Days like this will always remind me of Bryan College. Of walking to class on foggy mornings with a cup of coffee, too little sleep and nappy hair. Those days of anticipating my life as a wife, of living with my best friends and feeling like an adult and having it all together. I'm still, after ten months, in a stage of adjusting from living in the south where I'm comfortable to calling a Lake Michigan town home. I live here, I work here and I embrace that. But there's a part of me that will be down south, in that place that has so many of my growing up years, my tears, my laughs and my memories.
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