So, you leave home one day.
You leave home to try out for this competition. It’s a singing competition and you think, well no one REALLY makes it on these things. There’s no way you’re going to be the one to get to the end, but you have to at least give it your best shot.
You leave home and you go to this singing competition and you meet someone there, right at the beginning. You meet him and you hit it off and you think, oh, he’s going to make it. He’s going to be famous.
But then suddenly you’re both on to the next round, and you’re TOGETHER. You’re in a group with a bunch of strangers but they seem alright, and the one seems to slot into the space around you seamlessly.
And suddenly you’re onto the next round, and the next and the next and suddenly you’re out of the competition and you lost, but you didn’t really because you’re touring and you’re putting out a single and they’re talking about albums, and—
And it’s years. It’s years of living in each other’s pockets; you and three guys and one guy who means everything to you. Years of singing and recording and performing and touring and living a life that no one but the five of you will ever understand, but really it’s a life that only you and one other will ever REALLY understand. It’s the five of you but it’s also really just the two of you.
And you SEE home, sometimes. You visit, you swing round between the performing and the recording and the promoting and the travel. You see what used to be your home, and then your gone again in a whirlwind. It’s years. It’s five years that contain more than decades. You go and go and go and go and run and fly and perform and scream and go and crawl exhausted back into your bed in the early hours before you’re back up and going and going and—-
It’s like someone just flicked the light switch off.
And the silence is deafening.
You don’t remember being still for so long. No next-steps, no one telling you where to go and what’s happening.
It’s you and your person and a house that you bought at some point in the last five years. It’s barely been lived in, your own mark to place on it still packed up in boxes, things that you both packed up and thought, “we’ll deal with this someday.”
And that someday is here and now and everything is silent and slow and you suddenly find that everything is so much harder. Your relationship has been based around a life so busy and so rushed and so loud that you never had time to sit and think and learn and grow. You unpack the boxes and you unpack each other and things are so much HARDER this way. You unpack trauma and fear and in the middle of unpacking you both lose — people. Loved ones. Your silent life is compounded by grief and you don’t know that you ever learned how to live like this. You weren’t prepared for this part.
And things start to move again. Your person’s footsteps are more sure than yours, they start on their own path earlier. They bring you with them, of course, and you’re indescribably proud, even as you struggle to find YOUR next. What’s next? Why? You have houses that you share and you have thoughts that might be songs but your person’s already out there and beginning to succeed. The house is already a bit emptier when they come and go, and sometimes you follow and sometimes you don’t.
It’s not “before you know it” this time, when four years have passed. It’s four carefully picked-through years. There’s no whirlwind and there’s no rush, you’re going slow and steady this time and you’re watching every minute like a hawk. You’re struggling with your partner and you’re making it through each night by the skin of your teeth and by the fingers clasped together and by wet cheeks and tight grips but you’re making it. It’s four years and you’re finally able to put something out. Something special and something yours, all yours. You’re finally making it with plodding, sure steps. You know who you are and what you are and then—
Then the world shuts down.
It shuts down and you can see from the beginning that this won’t be a quick stopover. You’re back home and your partner is back home but it’s not the gloomy worrying quiet this time. You spent five years in the center of a hurricane and four years holding on so tight because you didn’t know how to survive the silence, and now there’s…
There’s you and there’s your spouse and there’s both of you. Standing up and side by side and weathering the storm together. The houses are filled and bright and loud in the comfortable way. You sing together and write together and have those hard conversations you spent so many sleepless nights afraid of. He’s on tour again and you’re right there, and you’re on tour now, FINALLY, taking those steps on your own onto the stage.
And he’s right there too.
Physically but also in your words, in your songs. Just like you are with him.
You left home over a decade ago and never went back. But here, through struggle and heartache and darkness and silence and light and love, you found home.
amandla
blakekathryn
izzy806
2087
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
jimmyeatworldofficial
dailybridgerton
prguitarman
