I Stand With Kesha -- my summer of healing and an ode to a woman who inspires me
sometimes, life throws you a summer full of PTSD struggles and healing. it gives you a lot of very hard nights and a lot of long drives around town after EMDR sessions where you question every person you've ever trusted and whether you ever really knew yourself.
(going through EMDR is like stumbling upon a biography in a bookstore and realizing that it's about you but you never knew half of the things in the book. you climb into bed with this very long book and you stay up all night until you’ve finished it. and you’re exhausted when you’re done, and you grieve that the book is over and that you have nothing more to read. but then you realize, you will spend the rest of your life rereading and rereading that book, trying to understand how it could have ever possibly happened to you).
you struggle with authenticity, especially with the job search -- you're promoting someone that you're not sure exists. you're selling yourself to people in so many different career fields that you wonder if you studied the right thing in college after all. you make "professional" facebooks, twitters, and instagrams. you find it's hard to even spend time with the people you love most, and your ability to even reply to texts requires many spoons. and you know that your inability to communicate effectively and your inability to be consistent is pushing away people -- important people in your life -- and you just pray that you’ll find a way to make it up to them one day.
but you find things that work for you, that bring out the light in you again and make you feel healed and whole again. you drive towards the rising skyscrapers of downtown, the sun bleeding into the skyline’s buildings -- the rosy pinks and tangerine oranges of sunset mixing with the charcoal grays of window panes. you drive, and it rains, and you imagine yourself dancing on parking garage rooftops, dancing in the rain until you finally feel clean again. you drive, and the steam rises from the pavement, and you imagine that it carries you to a new town where no one knows you or your story or even your name -- and you never have to fear running into your rapist at kroger ever again.
and you find things that work for you, that bring out the light in you again. poetry, dramatic journal entries, scribbles on page and tumblr text box. photographs of art you found in new york and paris museums. the stories of others. the triumphs of others. the authenticity of others fills you with hope.
you find their words in books and songs, and it begins to be songs on the radio and in your car and on your way home, so in those moments that you’re driving towards the sun and you feel so alone, you hear another woman screaming her pain and you can, finally, scream with her.
it just so happens that you’ve known this girl for awhile. her name is kesha, and you met in 2010 at a meet n greet. you bonded over attending the same middle school, and you admired her free spirit and her ability to embrace exactly who she was. you especially loved her lion mane braid that she managed to pull of perfectly.
you heard her sing later that night, at a benefit concert to raise money for the Nashville flood, and she sang “animal” for the first time live. the concert was insanely short, maybe 30 minutes, and you were disappointed, but you kept listening.
“warrior” came out your freshman year of college and your winter break was spent driving around your hometown, replaying the lyric “julie’s still a waitress, living on tips” from the track called “Wonderland.”
the college you attend for your freshman year (syracuse university) happens to book Kesha as their main act for their spring concert. it was the first night you ever got drunk, there was so much confetti, and she screamed, “get inside MY VAGINA” during the bridge of “Gold Trans Am.”
then, she disappeared. she went to treatment, she got better, and when she came out, you heard the stories of abuse that she suffered. during this time, you also went through a few experiences and traumas of your own that gave you the ability to connect and relate to Kesha in an unexpected way.
there was a protest in Nashville against SONY that demanded they release her from her contract with Dr. Luke. you marched, you chanted, and you raised your sign in the air -- the words “TIK TOK SONY” written in glitter paint.
you spoke to The Tennessean about your experience and gave them your whole fucking name. you stopped being afraid of your ex-boyfriend coming after you, of his threats to kill himself because of you, and you chose to live your life for YOU.
("I get my justice through doing rallies, through speaking out about what happened to me, through writing about it," Wilson said. "She's trying to get legal justice and I admire her so much for that, and it's terrible that she didn't get it.")
Kesha doesn’t get freed from her contract, but she finds a way to make music that is about her story and her experiences. It’s beautiful and authentic, and it may be released on Dr. Luke’s record label, but it’s HER music.
You hear “Praying” on the radio and you cry because it’s such a radical notion to you, to pray for whoever hurt you. and so you start to -- you pray for each person who has ever raped you and you pray that they learn to love themselves so that they will never ever hurt someone else like that again.
you pray for their other victims, because you know they exist (you recently found an online forum where a dozen women came forward to speak about their own experiences with your rapist). you pray that they find a way towards happiness and peace.
and you pray for yourself and that your Higher Power will grant you serenity to accept the things you cannot change, courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
you run your fingers through your own lion mane of blonde, messy hair, and you buy yourself one ticket to see Kesha at The Ryman in September because you have fucking earned yourself a trip to church to worship the music that is going to get you through this shit.
pending the background check, you have found a job you will start in a little over a week, where you will be helping other people get through the hardest moments of their mental health journeys. you have prayed and waited so long to be strong enough to help others.
and you hope that this is finally it -- the rainbow after the storm.
turnnoffyourmind
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