The Year I Turned 27

“We don't give in to the weakness”: My mantra when it's hard to get out of bed in the morning. I hear Ruston Kelley’s voice echoing in my head when I fight the innate urge to lie back down. When I feel like surrendering to the lazy voice in my head, I hear the melody start to play. And when I do give in and feel a deep sense of remorse during the late morning or early afternoon, mourning all that I will not have accomplished today, I remember to give myself some grace because “I’m just going through some changes.” It is not only sleeping in that these lines apply to. There are other aspects of my life that warrant this reflection as well. I’ve found it helps to remind myself that “I can do hard things.” There are more days where these reminders are necessary now that the sun went into hiding, along with you.

It's been one year, today, since “Single at the Same Time” became the song I cried to in the car on the drive home. Regularly. “I never wanted to be that girl” and I told my friend just as much when we had that 6-hour conversation in February, freezing on my porch until my phone had to be plugged in. One more percent and the charge would've been nonexistent, but I made it to my charger on time. I have the screenshot of the 0% charge as a memento to prove it. I'm thankful those trusted souls were there for me during that dark, confusing time where everything felt more unknown than ever before. When Ashley McBryde sang the line, “he never had a ring on, so I never thought to ask,” it cut deep.

When I first dove into Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well, I wanted to keep floating in those waters. Sometimes intentionally diving deeper into the well, other times allowing myself to sink into the depths, but each time rising with more complex feeling as I took that breath of air again. This work masterfully captures many of the emotions I have experienced over this past year. I should have known just how well it would read me from the instant I heard the line, “when I turned twenty-seven, everything started to change.” So much has transformed over this transitional year in my life.

Like Kacey, I too, was wishing that he was not “too good to be true,” but deep down I knew he would be before I even knew he was a possibility. The moments that felt like “that’s what heaven is” kept me hanging on to hope. Those things that I know “I would miss from the other side” are the ones that kept me hanging on: “the cute way he mispronounces certain words, the smell of his clothes… the shape of his heart.” I couldn’t deny the way that when I look at him, “I’m always looking through anime eyes” and it had been that way “since the first time that I saw [him, he’d] given me anime eyes.” My soul resonated with the sentiment of “Giver / Taker”: “I would give you everything that you wanted, and I would never ask for any of it back, and if I could take only as much as I needed, I would take everything you had.” Is that really too much to ask? I think if it’s the right fit, the right time, the right moment, it shouldn’t be. It should be a given.

But I have been left questioning too often over the course of 2024 whether it’s “random or fate… is there an architect?” Every word of “Nothing to be Scared Of” my heart could have written. “But if a train is meant for me, it won’t leave the station and pull away” is a painful truth I needed to hear again and again. No matter how much I assured him that there was “nothing to be scared of,” or told him to “come to me and drop [his] bags and [I’d] help [him] unpack them, [he’s] the only one I wanna give my love,” I couldn’t convince him to be ready for something that he just wasn’t, because as Miranda Lambert said so wisely, “a heart can’t be tested, when it ain’t well-rested.” No matter how impatient I am, how much I pray and wish away the waiting, the aching time of indecision, imagine a world where it goes as smoothly as I know it theoretically could, in an ideal world, that will not make it my reality. In another universe, we coexist in harmony, without the obstacles we face in this timeline, but I know that hope, no matter how great nor how long it is sustained, clung to tightly against all odds in the tumultuous storm of strong emotions that have been brought about, will not make the world outside mirror the one I envision in my mind’s eye.

I told myself that “I’m alright with a slow burn,” which is true; however, I needed to remind myself that there is a difference between a slow burning candle and one that goes unlit. It holds the potential to smell oh-so-sweet, given that extra bit of energy and attention required to get the fire really going. The wick can burn brightly, if given the chance. But it takes the perfect alignment of both the candle and the match in time and space for the warmth to be felt, otherwise, it is just simply an imagining, and nothing more. Potential gone unfulfilled.

He may have been my Golden Hour, but given the nature of the ephemeral beauty, it does not last. “We had our day in the sun” but now I’m telling him, “you can have your space,” and he’s taking it.

Sometimes I wish he would’ve followed Brandy’s advice when she said, “tell her you don’t love her.” It may have been easier, but that doesn’t lead to a good story. Regardless of whether I know what’s good for me, and whether my actions reflect that, I know that I’ll still “love [him] ‘til I’m buried.” And deep down I’ll still hold onto the hope that, when he’s ready, he’ll “come back to me.”

Ashley’s songs continue to know how to strike a chord in my heart. Though I wished at times that he would “use me like I’m using” him, I now want to tell him “you can’t just quit me, when you get lonely, come pick me back up… then leave me empty when you’ve had enough.” The cycles of lows and highs are too exhausting to sustain and I feel the burn out, and I know he does too.

Through it all, Kacey reminded me that “there’s always been a rainbow hanging over [my] head” and I sang the lyrics to the children I care for over and over when they needed to be grounded. Brandi was alongside her to “pick my heart up off the ground” which allowed me to do the same for my little ones. Just like Eric Church, so many songs have been there for me “in my darkest hour” and I know they will continue to be my life rafts, guiding me to solid ground when the waters get choppy in the coming years.

I’ve learned that I need to follow my gut. But now “I’m saying goodbye to the people that I feel are real good at wasting my time. No regrets baby, I just think that maybe, you go your way and I’ll go mine… I’ve got to take care of myself. I found a deeper well.” I am excited to explore it’s depths. I know the sun will stick around for longer and longer each day now until “Springtime.”