Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

in a Michelob beer mirror, learning how to move each muscle in my face. In fifth-grade science class we were told about involuntary muscles, and how we couldn’t move them, so I set out to prove that wrong, starting with my lower eyelids. I mastered moving my ears in all directions, isolating my lower eyelids and each nostril separately, and each quarter of each lip independently.
    I loved to observe people. I watched love and life play out in a million ways, but one of the best things I learned was this: You don’t outrun pain. I saw men and women in those barrooms all trying to outrun something, some pain in their life—and man, they had pain. Vets broken and drifting, abused women, abused boys who had grown up to be emotionally crippled men. I saw them all trying to bury that pain in booze, sex, drugs, anger, and I saw it all before I was able to indulge in many of those behaviors myself. I saw that no one outran their suffering; they only piled new pain upon their original pain. I saw the pain pile up into insurmountable mountains, and I saw the price people paid who buried all that pain, and along with it their hope, joy, and chance at happiness. All because they were trying to outrun the pain rather than walk through it and heal. I knew I was young, and that I’d already had more than my fair share of confusion and pain. I resolved at that time to never drink or do drugs, to try to find the courage to face myself as honestly as I could. Iwas keenly aware that numbing my feelings and instincts meant cutting myself off from the only real safety net I had. I knew I was vulnerable, I knew there were predators around me, and I also knew that my body came equipped with the most exquisite alarm system in the world—emotions and instincts—and that, for the most part, mine worked beautifully. I could tell in a second who felt safe and who did not. I learned to read people instantly.
    At home my feelings were alive and well, if not always pleasant. I could tell that being hit did not feel good, and because I was emotionally alive, I could tell it was not my fault. But as any child who has suffered this way knows, the unpredictability and randomness of even infrequent rages can be excruciating. I could tell I was scared, and being able to tell that meant I could tell when I wasn’t. If I cut myself off from my only alarm system by numbing my feelings, I would be defenseless. Not having access to my senses could lead to disaster, and so instead of turning away from my feelings, I turned toward them. I studied them. I turned to writing rather than to drugs to take the edge off. I vowed to try to tell the truth about myself when I wrote—not the version of myself I had to learn to be in order to keep my dad’s temper from flaring, nor the version I had to be in bars to stay unseen, nor the persona I was onstage. At school, at home, in bars, I was an emotional contortionist, alternating between awkward self-aggrandizing and trying to win favor so as to fit in. When I wrote, I let myself be dead honest, flaws and all. But I was myself, I felt real. I went inside myself when a pen was in my hand and enjoyed that space in there. When I went in deeply to myself and my creativity, I was amazed at what I knew and saw. I had answers to things I did not otherwise have access to. I was able to see patterns in places that had confused me before. I wrote about the way my dad treated me. The way he made me feel that so many things at such a young age were my fault, and I was able to untangle the web of his projection and separate myself from him. At times Iwas too young to make sense of it all, but I vowed to come back later when I had better skills to deal with it. Until then, I told myself I could not control the pain or my situation, but I could control the pain I inflicted on myself. I was confused, scared, hurt, but I was alive in there. At least I had that. Maybe if I didn’t let it go, maybe if I used words like Hansel and Gretel