CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE MUSIC

Sometimes when you’ve lost your joy, there’s only one real way to bring it back.

Dearest Nurse,

Today is a good day. Today is one of those days that brings with it the promise of what the future could be. How I might expect to feel. And a stark reminder of how it used to be. How I used to be.

When I was a kid, growing up in the grungy hotbed of art, fashion, and pretentious bullshit that was New York City in the 90s, being “happy” wasn’t cool. Brooding, listening to Kurt Cobain, carving little shapes in your skin and picking the scabs until they scarred. That was cool. Having fucked up parents, being an artist anyway, and being broke. That was even cooler.

Now, my parents split up not once, but twice during my childhood. We were a middle class family, which, with New York City prices, is akin to being broke. And I was an artist. One that actually came from a family of artists. I had all the makings of a kid that should have been cool, but I wasn’t. Why? I was always fucking happy.

I remember embarrassing my friends when I would jovially talk to cab drivers, baristas, waiters, whoever was around. Like I said, I love talking to strangers.

“Omigod, shut up!” They would growl, covering their faces, and laugh with one another at how annoying I was. Like I said, I had shitty friends when I was a teenager.

I was also a goofball and a prankster. My favorite gag was distracting a friend by pointing at something that wasn’t there, and then shoving them into one of the many piles of garbage bags left out on the sidewalks. My friends fucking hated that. You would too if you had spent two hours that morning trying to make it look like you didn’t give a shit about how you looked. They never quite pulled it off. I figured I was doing them a favor.

I loved sleepovers, playing tag in the Marriot Marquis Hotel in Time Square, and staging pretend girl fights in the Virgin Megastore. My favorite was when we’d be heading back to my dad’s apartment on the west side at the same time all the Broadway shows were getting out. One of us slump in the middle of the group - usually CB - throw her arms around our shoulders, and I’d yell, “SHE’S GONNA PUKE!” Those tourists parted like the red fucking sea. It was amazing. And I’m not trying to brag, here, but that was totally my idea.

But all too soon those days were over. And not because I wanted them to be, I didn’t, but because by fifteen my friends deemed sleepovers, tag, and fake fights not cool anymore.

Instead, we would pregame with 40s of Old English, sneak into a club, or go to a house party. Maybe hook up, maybe not, but one of us, without fail, always got too drunk. One of them threw up in my lap on the subway train once. But I guess that was fair, considering I had thrown up on an Italian Vogue model at a party not long before. We went from cute, funny girls to walking disaster pants in a single year.

And to top it off, we started hanging out with some older guys in our high school that were into drugs, emo bullshit music, dressing like hobos, and generally complaining about everything. I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t a fan of the new additions to our circle.

“Do you ever think that… um…” I hesitated over a cup of coffee with one of my teen girlfriends at the Waverly Diner, “that we’re kinda hanging out with losers?”

She was deeply offended. But she later legit dated a homeless guy, so I’m pretty sure her barometer was way off.

By senior year I started to edge toward other friends I had made, stopped drinking almost altogether, and set my sights on what came next. Because I just couldn’t handle anymore forced misery. All I wanted to be was happy, and so, I was.

I wrote a lot about “my nature” yesterday, and happiness is another piece of that. I am a naturally happy person. I always have been. For the most part, it has always come easy to me, and I am very, very lucky for that. Depression runs in my family like a pack of wild boar. It’s ugly, messy, and hella destructive. Every time I think of them I wonder how I managed to dodge that bullet. Man, am I glad I did.

But, as I also mentioned, particularly in the last few years with Paris, I started to lose my happy. It wasn’t just the relationship, or the way I was being treated, having young children, pressure from work, yada yada. It was because, once again in my life, happiness wasn’t cool.

When you’re married to someone who is unhappy, isn’t succeeding, and feels stagnant and hopeless, anything that brings you joy creates an inequity in the relationship. Such was the case with Paris and myself, particularly when it came to work.

I love my job. I get to be creative almost every single day, and - when I’m under contract, which is pretty often - people actually pay me for it. It’s fucking brilliant. I also own a small retail company I am building myself, and I love the shit out of that too. I love it all, and I worked so fucking hard to make my life the way I dreamed it could be. But at some point, Dear Nurse, it all started to feel like… work. Why? Because in so many words, Paris told me that’s how it should be.

Paris is an artist as well, but has had a lot of trouble getting traction in his career. It’s not entirely his fault. The odds are stacked against him for a host of reasons, but to be honest, I could never make heads or tails out of how he was conducting things. He didn’t put himself out there enough. He didn’t follow up with people that could help him. When he would get something, it was never good enough. And there were so many smaller projects that could have been great. Things he seemed excited about at first, but then never saw them through. Paris was really good at that, and I was really good at supporting it.

Oh, you want to play guitar now? Here! I’ll get you a guitar! Oh, you want to make movies now? Okay! Let’s buy an expensive camera! You’re a comedian now? Sweet. I’ll build you a website! You want to do voice over work? Fantastic. I’ll buy you everything you need, AND make you an in-home sound booth!

I’m keeping the fucking sound equipment, by the way.

I tried everything, but work was always a sore spot. Any time I asked him how things were going, whenever I tried to help him, he would always get defensive, tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and we would - you guessed it - get into a fight.

Damn, we had a lot of fights.

So, if Paris was having a hard time with work, I should be having a hard time, too. I wasn’t stagnating like he was. I was getting traction. A lot of it. So, that meant actually doing the work had to be arduous, or it wasn’t worth the time I was spending away from the kids, or away from him.

Back in my single days, I was blissfully all over the place. I’ve been a freelance artist for a long time, so even in my twenties I was working from home a lot, back in the townhouse apartment on Wilcox. I would run in the morning, or whenever I felt like it. Drink loads of coffee, hammer away at whatever I was working on for a while, and then take a break. Maybe I’d paint for a bit. I loved to paint. Maybe I’d clean the house to get the kinks out of my back. Or maybe, just maybe, before getting back to work, I would put on some music, loud, and give myself a dance break.

I am a huge fan of dance breaks. My sophomore year of college I lived in a triple with two girlfriends. We’d host study sessions with some of the other kids around the dorm, everyone hunched over books and notepads in and around our spacious room. Then, whenever I noticed the deep forehead creases start to set in, I’d throw my book down and yell, “DANCE PARTY!” I’d put on whatever song I had just downloaded from Napster, and we would rock the fuck out. Just one song, that was it. That was all we needed. Then, sweaty, refreshed and grinning, we’d get back to the books.

It was fucking great. When I’m finally running my own ship out there in the world of entertainment, I’m going to have dance breaks regularly. Just out of nowhere, blasting Motown, some 80s funk, or maybe just Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing, and I’m going to make everyone dance for three minutes before going back to the grind. They’ll either love me or hate me, but fucked if they’ll ever forget me. I’m unforgettable, remember?

But with Paris, the idea of a dance break was unthinkable. How dare I have a good time while I was supposed to be working? And take a break? I mean, if I was doing that, I should be helping out, not dancing, right? I should mention that Paris didn’t say any of these things out loud, per say, but he didn’t have to. He had said other things.

“If you’re working this hard and you’re not making money, you’re wasting your life.” He said to me once, back when I was doing everything in my power, spinning plates like crazy, trying to establish myself after graduate school.

“Yeah, but your work is…” Paris would say with a sneer.

“What? My work is what?”

“It’s just different, okay?” He would finally manage, without looking at me. Different than bartending is what he meant, which was made to make me feel bad. He was the artist that was suffering in the restaurant business. I was on another level. I couldn’t possibly understand.

“Hey. You gonna come out soon, or…?” He would pop his head into the room and ask, clearly annoyed. “I could use a little help, here!”

“You gonna make dinner, or what?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

“No, I mean, I can do it. You just have to communicate.” He never made dinner. Ever.

But to be fair, Paris always picked up the slack with the kids. Sometimes, however, it felt as though he was creating situations involving the girls so he couldn’t move forward. Times we could have gotten babysitters so he could work toward his creative career, enrolling Big in afterschool, sending Little to preschool five days a week. All of these things he took issue with. Acted like I was a negligent parent for recommending them.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just watch them then.”

Okay, then. Fine.

But it wasn’t fine. He was being a martyr, trying to manufacture reasons why his career was stalled, and using our children as an excuse. Someone had to take care of them, and I wasn’t doing it, so naturally, his career took the hit. Never mind that I offered numerous workarounds.

“Just tell me what you need and we’ll make it happen!” I said over and over and over again. But he never took me up on it. Just pushed on through and felt very, very sorry for himself.

So, whenever I holed myself up to get writing work done, it was pedal to the metal. Get ‘er done as fast as possible so you can stop at 4:30, make dinner, clean up, hang with the kids, and do your damn part already. Work became a chore. Everything became a chore.

The first thing I noticed when I left Paris was that I no longer felt guilty. For any of it. Not for leaving him, not for working, and not for how I spent time with my children. Sometimes I’m on, and I’m one hundred percent present. Sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m distracted. Sometimes I get frustrated, bellow, and want to dissolve into a puddle of my own shitty mom-ness. I have a ways to go as a parent, for sure, but I don’t feel guilty anymore. Instead, I feel something I used to feel all the time, but had lost somewhere: motivated.

In the days immediately after Romeo and I met at that rooftop bar, not all the texts back and forth were dirty. That Sunday morning I took the girls down to The Grove. We had breakfast together, and I watched them play on the lawn by the fountain, giggling and running in the picture perfect morning sun. It didn’t matter that Little had thrown her eggs at a neighboring table or eaten her kid’s menu. It didn’t matter that the fountain wasn’t on yet, or that we eventually got kicked out of the lawn area for a scheduled cleaning. I was blissed the fuck out. I was mom. Not guilty mom. Not stressed mom. Not overworked mom. Not god-I-hate-my-marriage-and-I-want-the-fuck-out mom. I was just plain mom, and now there was someone in this world who cared about me for who I was. Who never forgot me. The core of me. Who I was before my marriage chewed me up. Who I would be again. I told Romeo as much via text.

You know how happy that makes me? He texted back.

This journey has had its ups and downs. I’m still not sleeping well, waking up just before 5AM every morning. I still have a shitload to do around the house to put everything back together. I have a long way to go in terms of learning how to be a single mom with the girls. I still stress about money on the daily. But I know things are looking up. How? Because I had a dance break today.

Music has been an integral part of this journey for me. I always loved listening to music, but in the past few years, I stopped making a point to listen. When you find yourself alone for the first time in over a decade, however, music becomes your best friend.

Music saved me in that moment where I was furious with Paris for having the capacity for change, and dragging me through the muck anyway. Music lifted me up when I knew I had to say goodbye to Romeo for this month of healing and self discovery. And music drives me further and deeper every day.

Today, while the kids were with Paris, I danced in the mirror like a teenager. I twirled all over the house, unapologetically lip-synced love ballads in grand, theatrical style. I even got out of the shower and danced naked in the hallway, all for myself, by myself. And I cry sang too, my voice horse and quavering as the tears streamed down my face. It was glorious.

Music is bringing me back. Not just my happy, but my sad and my funny and my silly and my anger and my fierceness. It’s bringing back my sexy and my self-love, and all of those fabulous, indulgent, satisfying feelings we are programmed as human beings to be able to feel, but that I denied myself. Because, when you’re guilty, when you suppress your happy for the sake of someone else, everything goes with it. At least for me, anyway. I can’t cut off one emotion - as much as I would like to sometimes - without cutting off the whole bunch.

Another part of this journey for me is about reawakening my vulnerability. Exposing my soft underbelly, and celebrating it. I’ve never been very good at this. Slightly damaged tough girl from New York City, remember? But I’ve always wanted to be. I remember hearing an expression once about being soft on the outside but tough on the inside. That’s how I want to be. Bravely vulnerable on the outside, honest and caring. And on the inside? That’s where the sticks and stones just can’t touch me. Try as they might, I know who the fuck I am. That’s my idea of grace, and I want to be graceful. I think I can be, and I know music will be a part of that.

And so, in honor of music and all it has done - and is doing - for me, I decided to create a playlist. I’d like to share it with you here so you can listen along with me. I’ll be updating it regularly as this journey continues, all with songs that are instrumental to my process. Make me smile, make me cry, make me dance, and flood me with joy. Because joy is who I am. It’s who I’ve always have been. And working from home today, singing, dance breaking, and generally taking care of myself for the first time in a long time, has been absolute perfection.

Today is a day that reminds me I’m doing the right thing. I’m on the right track - no pun intended - and music is a huge part of that.

I won’t let my world go quiet again, Dearest Nurse, I can promise you that.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet

P.S. Dearest Nurse, if you are enjoying my story, please share it. You are the only way I am able to get more readers, and the more of you are out there, the better this project will be. 🧡