Living Out Loud. (V8) winner. Little Treasures.

On a recent trip to Nags Head, I got the crazy idea that I wanted to, no, ~ had to ~ sing karaoke. I’m not much of a limelight type gal, so this whole strong urge thing kinda confused me. I was going with its flow, though ~ I’d been practicing in the car, and I sounded gooo-ooood.

So after a great seafood dinner and two shots of tequila, my girlfriends and I moved to the bar, and Jose Cuervo and I got up and sang our little hearts out to Born to Be Wild. Quite honestly, I sucked. And there’s a video to prove it.

Then my friend Pam goes up and nonchalantly belts out these heartfelt, gusty, soulful renditions of I Will Survive and other disco-era hits. We were floored. She shrugged off the compliments and explained that she’d done a lot of public speaking in her job.

I can do it, she said, because I’ve learned to listen to my own voice.

Huh.

And here I am at 45, having spent the better part of my life looking for ways to keep a gag on it.

Somewhere along the way, a long time ago, I picked up the notion that thinking what I want to think and doing what I want to do were somehow hurtful to someone else and therefore wrong.

Somewhere along the way I decided it was easier to try to stifle the voice that screamed to be heard than to deal with the change and chaos and guilt and fear that came whenever it managed to whisper its dreams to me.

Somewhere along the way I tried to pretend there was no voice and I was happy being settled and safe in the familiar like everybody else.

Somewhere along the way, I really tried to just kill that damn voice.

But somewhere along the way the voice decided it was stronger than me and it wasn’t giving up without a fight.

It didn’t care that at 21 I’d married someone I knew I’d divorce later.

It didn’t care that it took me three tries to get through college.

It didn’t care how many times I dropped my life and moved out west.

It didn’t care that I tried to beat it, suffocate it and drown it to death with shitty relationships, food and wine.

It just kept right on talking, and it made damn sure I listened.

The first time it spoke was at the end of a week-long bulimic binge.

In the middle of dinner with friends I was hit with a massive wave of nausea and spent the night on my bathroom floor vomiting exorcist-style. Every eight minutes for the first hour, then every 15, then every 30, until dawn. I was alone, wracked, dehydrated, painful and filthy. And I hate being nauseous more than anything.

I laid my head against the wall and truly wanted to die.

From a far corner of my mind I heard someone say, You like throwing up? You wanna do it again? And again?

So I did what anybody would do, right? I answered it.

If I live through this, I will never throw up again.

That was February 6, 2004. I can’t explain it and I don’t take credit for it.

All I know for sure is, after 17 years, the urge to eat and vomit my guts out simply, quietly, vanished.

Even in the midst of a stomach illness that kept me feeling bloated and miserable for months ~ a bulimic’s worst nightmare, a little black, ironic humor ~ it just wasn’t an option.

The second time I heard the voice, in the fall of 2005, it spoke loud and clear.

I was just back from 6 months in LA. One of the things I loved about the city was that I tended more toward hiking boots than wine bottles. I’d become quite the little vino connoisseur before I left Virginia Beach.

When I came back, I fell into old habits, and one Friday night, fell out of a local bar. I told my friends that things were gonna change. Or rather, I was gonna change.

And that night, as I was walking up the stairs to my bedroom, I heard it.

You need to sleep with a rock.

Yep.

Just an unassuming thought like the ones that pass through your brain about a 1000 times a day:

I should stop at the store and get coffee.

It’s time to feed the dogs.

I think  I’ll go to New York on vacation.

You need to sleep with a rock.

So I looked around and picked up a little rock that sits on my shelf.

I picked up the rock and I climbed into bed to read and I put it on my chest, which was as good a place as any.

I was reading James Frey’s controversial recovery memoir, A Million Little Pieces. After about 10 minutes in, at around page 99, he described a recovery graduation ceremony for two of his friends.

They have done their time . . . . they are ready to rejoin the outside World.

They both received a Medal and a Rock.

The Medal signifies their current term of sobriety,

the Rock their resolve to stay sober.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt connected to rocks, stones and crystals. I study their healing qualities and will keep certain ones with me at times. I found this rock in the mountains a few years back. One of three that form a larger stone that somehow divided neatly, I keep it now because of what it represents.

However, I tend to move a lot and I lean toward light travel. I can give away and throw away and work with whatever fits in my car. Things are replaceable. And to be honest, it isn’t the rock that I value, it’s the message. The rock was simply the conduit. It holds no special power.

So call it intuition, call it a message from the universe, or call it crazy.

But finding your voice isn’t about throwing back shots of tequila so you can sing out loud.

It isn’t about doing things you’re ashamed to tell yourself, let alone your best friend.

And it isn’t about spending 30 years depressed because you’re hiding from life and using every mechanism and every excuse in the book to do it.

It’s about believing in yourself, your creativity, your writing, your photography, your smile, your laughter ~ whatever it is.

It’s about believing in what you want to do and what you have to say even if the folks in your audience are laughing and booing and walking out the door.

It’s about being authentic and grounded and real.

It’s about trust.

Mostly, it’s about listening.

Dropping the last of my defenses leaves me feeling raw, exposed and a little bit vulnerable sometimes.

So what?

You get to choose the road you follow.

Welcome to your life.

It’s that simple.

The Rock.