Debbie Gibson, Mumford & Sons, and Some Other Things.

Originally posted on April 10, 2013

When I was a kid I had a recurring fantasy: me, boarding my school bus in slow motion.  My hair swept back by an invisible wind machine, singing Debbie Gibson’s Out Of The Blue, my peers awed and rapt as I made my way down the narrow aisle to my seat in the back.

Now, the fantasy looks something like this: I win some sort of contest.  I meet Mumford & Sons (natch) before a show and (not so) off-handedly mention that I can sing gorgeous harmony to any and all of their songs and, I mean, if they want maybe it would be awesome to have a female voice on something tonight.  They’re thrilled, call me up onto the large and theatrically-lit stage, and I’m immediately and confidently thrust into the life of music I’ve always known was mine. They’re not even weird about me having their lyrics tattooed on my arm because they get it; if they didn’t get to dive into the souls of these songs every night, they’d probably get tattoos like this, too.

:::

“I have felt – my whole life – like I’m just a little too much … I’ve spent a whole lot of my life trying to be different than I am at my core.  Fighting my nature.  Trying to be less sensitive.  More social.  Trying to climb back onto the charts.  Dulling my intense feelings with whatever was nearest – wine, food, cigarettes, sex, whatever.  I just wanted to be acceptable.  I wanted to fit in.  But I don’t know about that anymore.”

It was Glennon, of course, of Momastery.  I read this as I drank my coffee.  Eckhart Tolle was on the iPod when I began reading.  It was distracting.  I got up to turn it off as soon as I realized that this post was something different.  Not better, no, because Glennon is always just what I seem to need.  But these words she’d poured out at 5:30 in the morning?

They were for me.

After I shared the essay on my Facebook page a friend who’s been in the “too much” with me – deep in it – wrote, “She is you.  I mean you are her.  I mean holy moly you are so similar.”

:::

It’s exhausting to keep thinking, over and over again in a tedious and often mean-sounding loop, that you’re crazy.  That normal people don’t cry at the same song over and over again like this.  That there must be some way to feel less intensely about every. single. thing.  That the black and white and up and down and here and there and FUCK.

It often leads to the desire to numb the bigness.  Or it takes me to the I-just-want-to-be-regular place, the one where I sit quietly at a dinner gathering, smile perched precariously on my face, wanting to scream or run or drive as far as I can away from there.  Not because these people aren’t lovely – they’re my friends, so of course they’re lovely.

But because I don’t always know how to be a person in the world.

Which, I think you’ll agree, might make a gal feel crazy.  Might make a gal feel alone.  Might make a gal with a beautiful life feel like an amateur for not always getting it.

So to read what I read today, well, it mattered.

Lovin’ on ya,
*E