Live Like A Warrior

I love a lot of things about music, but one of my very favorite things about the gift of song is the way it can make you feel held, seen, felt, and understood. For me, when the words of a good tune hit my core, I don't feel so much like the artist who created the song "gets me" but rather that, should I be melted down to a big puddle of words and tunes, like the wicked witch in the wizard of Oz after she gets water dumped on top of her head, that the essence of who I am would be made up of that song. I am one with the song, the song is with me, so to speak. This experience happened to me today.

I was driving in my car (sans kids, which rarely happens) and I decided to listen to some music of my past. You know what I mean by that, I'm sure. There are artists and songs that are the ANTHEM of a season in our lives. We listen to them/it while brushing our teeth, eating our cereal, and walking our dog. Then, all of a sudden, we grow tired of the same old tune, or we simply move on to a new and shiny one that lures us away to spend our teeth brushing time listening to its melody. This particular music was from my high school years. To be specific, my Senior year and the peak of my obsession with long distance running. Matisyahu and his album Spark Seeker filled my Subaru with it's vibe, and my mind with the memories associated with each song. It wasn't until the song Live Like A Warrior opened, that a wave of mixed emotions crashed on top of me. I'm honestly surprised I didn't tuck and roll out of my moving vehicle and begin sprinting full throttle down the road. Adrenaline seemed to instantaneously pulse through my veins like someone had injected me with it, and I wanted to cry and laugh in one moment. I was catapulted back in time to a sunny day in Montreat NC, wrapping up another long run at Lake Susan. I felt great, alive, on top of the globe, if you will. And then I was slung shot to another moment, also in Montreat, also running, but in the winter and this time, the song comes on in my old head phones that were included with my orange iPod mini, and cheetah mode is engaged (albeit a very slow, geriatric cheetah with ankle issues that is wearing a weighted vest and not really running, just out for a morning jog. HOWEVER, it was fast for me). And I feel the cold wind whipping my face and tears start to form, and I tell myself it's the wind in my eyes but I know it really isn't. The words pour over me like warm soup - what I feel is real enough to be put in lyric form. The hug of validation. Then I feel cold, lost and angry about the fact that those same lyrics are something I could not just relate to, but BECOME (should someone dump water on top of my head and I find myself to be allergic to H20 in the same way the Wicked Witch of the East was). The amount of shame and sorrow I felt that was being named and called out in this song seemed to be trying to pull me to my knees. So I ran harder.

For those of you who don't know much about me, I'm tempted to say there's not much to tell. However, I would be contradicting my own belief that each person has a story, and that each person's story matters. I am not an exception. My senior year of high school ended with several unexpected notches in my belt. Freshman year was fairly mild, Sophomore year brought immense insecurities after traveling overseas to attend a school in the Phillipines, bearing the brunt of rejection on several levels, leading to the development of an eating disorder, which progressed significantly into my Junior year. My senior year started out with my collision with a vehicle going 60 mph while I was out on one of my runs. Though I have little memory of the actual event, (excepting the insanely hot temperature of the pavement that I briefly found myself spread eagled on after becoming conscious for 15 seconds, and the split moment of time in which I saw my left arm karate chop in front of my face after the side of my body slammed against the car), I'm told it was gnarly and that I shouldn't have survived. The year that followed had me wishing, in part, that I hadn't. These emotions were the ones that came hurdling like a meteor from my hippocampus to my prefrontal cortex, and I could almost see the blue-gray haze of the mountain morning air circling around me on that run, and feel the swish of my long pony tail swinging like a pendulum from one shoulder to the other. I was there, with littler Emily, in that moment. I saw her need to be seen for who she was; a wildly insecure young woman who wanted so very badly to please, be good enough, and be accepted. But also a fighter. I never would have named myself as one back in 2013, but I heard that battle cry from the song, "Today, live like ya wanna. Let yesterday go and burn it in the fire. Live like a warrior." and I ACHED for the bravery to follow its lead. How could I let go of all the labels I had been slapped with? How could I overcome the very identity that I myself had helped build that seemed to be such a gross misinterpretation of who I actually was? I felt trapped, buried, and completely incapable of overcoming the box I'd closed myself up in, in an effort to keep those wounded parts of myself safe. That line from the song, the one that says to let yesterday go and burn it in the fire, was my original plan of action. I wanted to forget about the lonely night at the dorm in the Philippines, when I was the only girl who had not been asked to be a boy's date for the school dance. About the nights I would lay in the grass in my back yard and cry after everyone had gone to bed, looking at the stars and wishing that gravity would somehow work in reverse so I could fall into their vastness and actually become as small as I felt. About the looks of disappointment or disapproval I'd seen on the faces of those who I longed to make proud. About the hurts I myself had perpetuated, and the damage I had done in the lives of those who did not deserve the cruelty born out of my own insecurities. I wanted it all to burn, and I didn't want to even watch it go up in flames. But today, the version of Emily who now has the guts to share her guts, understands that it is within those moments - the cruelest, saddest, most miserable ones, of our younger years, the ones that perhaps we as grown adults may label as "dramatic" or "silly" or "not a big deal" - that our warrior is born. And warriors we are indeed. I've spoken with so many warriors within this past month alone. Some may be fully aware of their warrior hood, and others see their younger selves - the ones still living with wounds and trying with everything in their power not to let all the precarious pieces of their past that are stacked like china on their head and hands, to come tumbling down around them - as the problem. It is for you that I decided to sit down and write this post. Those moments, the ones we wish to turn to ash, have so much more weight to them than they are credited. They must be held with reverence and honor before we are able to extract the pure, adulterated truth of who we are, where we've been, and where we are going, from within it, and let the shame, guilt, disappointment, and labels we've kept wrapped within and around it, go up in smoke. I believe we are born warriors, but we forget it with the help of others. It is our responsibility to return to and reclaim that title. It is one that, I guarantee, you are worthy of.