I started diligently building my marketing business that year while continuing to sing and perform. I took my daughter with me everywhere I could – tour buses, recording studios, and backstage. I made sure to make time for her to do the things she wanted to do, and I had incredible support from my parents and friends. Being a single mom was honestly everything I needed in my life at that time. I had tried out relationships one after another. Between 5 past relationships, I had been lied to, cheated on, betrayed, ignored, belittled, had my dreams come true, and watched them crumble beneath me. I was no longer willing to let myself be an “extra” in my story. I was about to take center stage and the crowd was in my hands. I believe it was at my lowest that I was interchangeably at my highest… given any moment of the day. When you’re left with no choice but to step it up and direct your own script, there isn’t much time to wallow in your fears and skepticism. You do what you have to do and you gamble on an outstanding cast that you know will never fail you. For me, that was God, my daughter, my family, and a couple of close friends. I started focusing on who I really was. What did I do before I had relationships? What were my passions? Whom did I want to be when I wasn’t influenced by a partner? I looked deep into myself, got angry at the loneliness, cried, and hit pillows out of frustration and confusion, and then I did what I knew I loved most – I started creating again. I would write journals, jot down dreams, craft short stories and poems, and write songs every chance I could. I remember loving to draft short stories as early as 4th grade and going back to writing always felt like coming home. Written words just had a way of saying all the things my mind was too timid to enunciate. I also came to realize that creating the world I wanted was the easiest way to set my focus and make it happen – or maybe deny the current state of the world in which I was residing. I began to reflect on everything so far in my life and how backward it seemed to be. I worked as a child and then took some time off as an older teen. I started a business and then went to college. I bought a house and then found someone to move in with me. I got pregnant and got married… then I tried to fall in love with him. I wrote songs, but I always wrote the ending first. I enjoyed my coffee in the evenings. I never made my bed in the morning, but I hated the sensation of wadded-up sheets, so I made the bed before getting in it at night. I had a hard time falling asleep during what others considered a normal bedtime, but nothing made me happier than falling asleep as the sun was just starting to bounce a weak shadow against my wall. I started seeing a pattern in which everything in my life was in reverse. Was I really such an oddity as a human, or were there others like this, too? The pattern became so predictable that I began to lean on it to accomplish the things I wanted to do. I would bid on a job to do and then figure out how to do it. I learned to repeatedly say yes and then make it happen. The more I followed this pattern the easier my life flowed. Maybe it was my impulsivity of needing to know the outcome first, or maybe it was simply the realization of an idea before taking action that worked for me. Whatever it was, it would set the scene for everything I wanted to be in life. I just had to do it backward than everyone else. My confidence emerged in a way that allowed me to be proud of my place in this world, rather than trying to fit into what society expected me to be. Why couldn’t I work doing what I loved? Why did I have to wake up in the morning and put my child to sleep early at night? I freed my mind from the cumbersome weighted blanket of social norms, and I finally started to live my own life.
I decided I would write my way to the top whether that was in music, books, or just journaling my life as a game plan. I wrote song after song and was even hired to write an entire score for a small theatrical performance at one point. I drove back and forth to publishers only to be told that my writing was a bit “ahead of the game”. I was advised to keep doing my thing and in 15 or 20 years it would likely be a hit. My confidence in my writing began to dwindle until my first published project. Suddenly, I had a strange feeling of accomplishment but also that old resurfacing boredom. I had everything I wanted, but now I wanted something else. While other people might find my feelings disheartening and unappreciative, I felt much the opposite. I was ready to make a new goal, and I couldn’t wait to get started on it. My mind was fueled by new possibilities, and I allowed myself to wander into any area that cradled a few thoughts of “what ifs”. The one “what if” that was repeating in my mind was “What if I tried having a relationship again?” I had closed my eyes to ever having a partner again because I didn’t want to ever feel that dependency on another person for my emotional well-being. I wanted to get to know myself, and I didn’t want anyone to pull me back into what was considered a normal life. I was just getting accustomed to my strange life and my unique desires, but two people caught my interest. One was my best friend, and one was an “old flame” from elementary school. I had contemplated a relationship with my best friend for about a year, but he was much older than me and seemingly uninterested in having a relationship with anyone at all. When my third-grade boyfriend showed up looking like a Calvin Klein model and refused to take no for an answer, I decided to give it a shot. The man was a saint, loved me unconditionally, and was one of the sexiest human beings I ever dated. The chemistry was alive and unextinguishable – but I found myself just wanting to share my dreams and goals with my best friend instead. How ironic to find what could have easily been the man of my dreams after years of terrible examples of what a partner should be… only to be mentally detached and longing for someone who didn’t even want what I did? After just a few months, I knew it was unfair and wrong to continue a relationship that satisfied my physical and emotional needs but could never scratch the surface of my desire for a deep mental connection. For the first time in my life, I was on the opposite end of a broken heart (so I thought). I was as honest and gentle as I knew how to be, and I believe I crushed my own heart that day while watching his shatter. In true backward fashion, he ended up consoling me because I felt such intense guilt for being the person that caused his pain. I knew that feeling so well, and being the cause of it was a breaking point for me. I knew from that day forward I would never put myself in that situation again. I was a person that fixed people and helped people – not a person that caused hurt or pain. It simply wasn’t in me to be that kind of person, and I would never do it again.