The memory in song

Music moves me more than anything, with being outdoors and with nature a close second. Music and song take me back. MUSIC IS A TIME MACHINE! Pop in some Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral and I'm back to wearing my Doc Martins and feeling like the weird Goth girl in a Christian school. Hearing Dixie Chicks Cowboy Take me Away brings me back to my senior year in high school. I can still feel the sand beneath my toes and the stinging in my eyes from the bon fires on a Southern Californian beach.  Amores Perros sound track (an AMAZING one at that) will bring back images of a summer as an undgrad when I got my heart eviscerated. The songs that bring me back to being a Grad student usually consist of Smack That, Kanye West Gold digger.

Which I immediately associate with no study, going to Tequila Hoppers, and understanding the pain of Jagger bombs.

 

Enter Feist The Reminder. This album was given to me as a gift by my cousin at my bridal shower for an ill-fated engagement.  I associated this warm album with the hot IT guy who came into my life. The guy who all the girls talk about, the guy who looked amazing in jeans, and drove a fast car. The guy, who would never admit it to my face, was a little nervous about reaching out to me. Brandy Alexander  fills my head with the image of watching the sun setting in the September/October evenings. Those Californian evenings when summer wants to hold on a little longer, and my heart is being filled with the apprehension of new love and laughter.

 

How my Heart Behaves  and I can't trust myself with loving you (not Feist, but John Mayer. By the way, this is a sexy as song) reminds me of my heart giving way to my hesitation in this new relationship with a man who was not anticipated at all in my life.  I felt so many conflicting emotions at the time, not wanting him as a rebound, giving him the time and space he deserved in my life at the time.

1234 : When the dust had settled in the chaos that was my heart (this took like a solid year and some therapy) I could rejoice in the simple joy of loving and living life with my now husband.


No song will trigger the sheer excitement and apprehension I felt as I waited in the wings of our wedding venue. I heard this music start and I knew that once my bridal party started it was only going to be a matter of time before I saw the person I'd be spending the rest of my life with. My heart still races when I hear this song. I try not to hear it often, because I want to preserve that emotion for as long as I can. I grabbed my fathers arm, saw our guests before us, and walked into the rain with a sense of relief that my partner in crime was at the end of that walk.

I have too many songs that I couldn't possibly put down here. Wildfire by John Mayer will remind me of the bringing in the Southern feel of Louisiana as we explored New Orleans and learned about Scott's family. You been catchin on like a wildfire. So much music, but although we may have our first song La Vie en Rose as husband and wife. He will always be my Brandy Alexander

He's my Brandy Alexander
Always gets me into trouble
But that's another matter
Brandy Alexander

I'm his Brandy Alexander
Always get him into trouble
I hide that I'm flattered
Brandy Alexander

around this time 5 years ago

It was around this time 5 years ago where I found myself at a very difficult impasse in my life. I was recently graduated from the MFT program at ULV, engaged, and supposedly packing to move to Mexico by Sept 22 (or around that time) to be with the guy I was supposed to marry. The last year of that relationship had be incredibly tumultuous. If you ask my mother she would tell you she heard too many nights me crying on the phone.  I had also been going through a 2 year long transformation back into the person my 18 year old self wanted to be: heading into a career of helping others, surrounded by family, and on my own. This was in stark contrast to who I was expecting to be: wife and future Mrs.

 

In May of that same year (5 years ago) I sat with my black robe and hood with ULV’s colors waiting for my name to be called. I would walk up, grab my diploma, and smile. However this moment of my life was fill with such bittersweet emotions. I kept thinking in my head that this moment, was the end. The end of my childhood. The end of my home. The end of my family. It was time for me to grow up and get married, because that’s what you do. I remember walking out of that stadium to “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and almost crying at this loss of innocence. I wasn’t ready to grow up and do the grown up things I had thrusted myself into doing.

Fast forward 4 months, everyday inching closer to my departure date. I had left a couple of years prior to Mexico and let me tell you that the pain I felt when I packed my bags was the equivalent of feeling my soul being ripped out of me. It didn’t even feel like I was growing, it felt like I was tearing at the stitches that held me together, tearing at the stitches of my family that had always loved me and surrounded me. There I was, with clothes I needed to pack, boxes I needed to label, and a wedding dress hanging in the closet. The invitations sent. The venue booked. “It’s just cold feet” I told myself. 

 

So what happened, you probably ask, since I’m sitting in So.Cal and not in Mexico. Scott. Scott happened. Completely unexpected, completely unplanned, and completely needed. He wasn’t what changed my mind to call everything off, he was the match that lit a very very volatile powder keg. I remember sitting across from him and thinking: his ambition is like my ambition, he is passionate about what he does (like how I’m passionate about what I do). Scott made me feel congruent with who I was all within the span of a couple of hours of having met him. And he hadn’t even kissed me yet or made any passes (so put those thoughts away). What he made me feel shook me to my core so much that reevaluated what I thought I had wanted. I didn’t want to leave my family. My family is my blood life. I didn’t want to leave California. It had taken me 24 years to learn to appreciate it’s beautiful sunsets, it’s Diet Spring (our winter and fall), and hell, even it’s traffic. It isn’t’ until you’re about lose all that you’ve known that you everything you’ve every loved comes into focus.  

 

I stayed for my family.

I stayed for my friends.

I stayed for my career.

And Ultimately, I stayed for Scott.

 

So here we are 5 years later, 3 months away from getting married (holy moly 3 months). We don’t have an anniversary, because that September 5 years ago was such a cluster of emotions that I couldn’t pick out a date if my life depended on it. I don’t have those fears of needing to grow up and buckle down, because I’m going to share my life with a man who keeps me in touch with still being a kid with his humor. I don’t fear losing my family because they are at least 10 min away driving. As for friends, well if I hadn’t stayed I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have the amazing girlfriends I have in my life now.

 

Bring on being married, bring on being a Mrs. I don’t mind it one bit. We’ve spent the last 5 years building a home for 2 (4 if you count the fur babies), and I look forward to building the next 85 (more if we are cryogenically frozen) years together.  I no longer fear being tethered to someone, as long as that person I’m tethered to is Scott.