More Than Maybe - Erin Hahn Page 0,64
easily, digging around in her tote bag. “Sometimes I can’t properly feel a thing until a pretty melody or ferocious bottom line plays me through it. I suspect you relate.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
She nods. “I have a song for you. It’s helped me work out all sorts of demons. Find your space, and maybe it will help you work through yours as well.”
I don’t hesitate to claim my shadowy corner. A soft melody, bittersweet and caressing, plays over the sound system, washing over me.
My eyes shut against the hot tears that rush against my lids, and I release a shaky breath before my limbs stretch and lift weightlessly away from me.
When I dance, I don’t always hear the lyrics, but today it’s like they are coming from inside me—like they were made for me in this moment.
Lyrics do that sometimes. They find their home at just the right time. Like a secret message in a bottle, floating on a current for decades, only to wash up at someone’s feet when the words are needed. This is my anthem. No matter the original intent of this song. No matter what Ke$ha wrote it about. It was sent to Madame for her pain, and now, it’s been given to me.
Ke$ha screams her heart out, and as the song builds, my feet pound on the floorboards, my knees absorbing the shock, my ankles crying under the stress. I twist on the balls of my feet and drag my toes along, relishing in the burn. Thriving in the pain. The aliveness of it. My core throbs, and I know this isn’t a pretty movement. This is as ugly as it gets. I itch in my skin. I want to peel Marcus from my DNA, strip away the parts of him that grow inside of me. Erase my father completely, from my life, from my memories. Every aching thing starts with him and his rejection.
I want to change the narrative. I want to reject him and everything he unwillingly gave me.
Except my father gave me music. And I hate him for it. I hate that he’s not only entwined in my genetics but in everything I love that makes me so essentially, irrevocably Vada. He doesn’t deserve credit for my favorite parts of me.
But it’s what keeps me dragging my bones back to him—the insane gratitude that he accidentally gave me the exact coping mechanism for dealing with him and being my ticket away from him. The (admittedly) distant memory of the days he would spew music trivia to me and talk about bands like he knew them personally and what their process was for creating. His hobby became my obsession, and I idolized him for it. Now I know better.
The weirdest part is when he gives Phil grief. Like, you were there first, dude, and you walked away. You walked away.
It’s all very fucked up. I’m positive there’s some Shakespearean study on this particular Venn diagram of father issues, and I bet it has something to do with self-loathing.
Add that as reason #785 why I hate Marcus: he’s turned me into an amateur psych major at eighteen. I scrub my hands down my face with a loud groan. After class, I slink off to the locker room and take my time splashing icy water on my cheeks until they feel cool to the touch. Hands still damp, I scrape my hair into a top knot and change back into my skinny jeans and T-shirt.
By the time I shove out of the locker room and into the relatively fresh air of the hallway, it’s empty. I stop at my locker to grab my phone and puffy vest, and finally it’s the weekend.
The air has the wet, almost rainy feel of early spring in Michigan, and even though there are barely any real buds on the trees yet, everything seems greener. It’s as though I walked out of school and entered into the Clarendon-filtered version of the world.
I inhale huge lungsful of air, holding them, absorbing them, and every time I let them out, I swear I shrink an inch. It’s incredible what a difference being outside makes. I pull out my phone and plug in my earbuds, scrolling to Amy Shark and playing it nice and loud. Readying for battle, armor settled back into place. I recite my five-year plan.
Loud Lizard, Behind the Music, Liberty Live, UCLA
Loud Lizard, Behind the Music, Liberty Live, UCLA
Loud Lizard, Behind the Music, Liberty Live, UCLA
I repeat the litany with each