The Girl

A while back, BK introduced me to Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit. I didn't listen to the entire Nashville Sound album right away. Then some major curve balls were thrown at me and my normal radio stations were not adding any kind of peace to my drives. I popped in the CD and started listening. Every song spoke to me for a different reason. I cried about Dan when listening to, "If We Were Vampires", I cried for my mom with, "Something to Love", but it was, "Hope the High Road" that I needed to hear and boy did I wear that song out.

Those curve balls ended up being blessings in disguise as my rollercoaster rolls on. New music gets played and life keeps rocking and rolling. On a run the other day, I had all of my millions of songs playing randomly when, "Molotov" started. It got me thinking about change, my change. 

I smiled as his mellifluous voice sang:

Another life but I still remember
A county fair in steamy September
In the Year of the Tiger 19-something

I thought about The Girl that I used to be back in 19-something. I was fearless. I was loyal to a fault...an enormous fault. I was ride-or-die before ride-or-die was cool. I made some bad choices and dared the world to stop me. 

At the start of the 20-something, I was The Girl behind the bar at Redeyes. I was opening cans, unscrewing little wines, slinging cheap drinks, smoking cheap stoags, and taking too many shots. I was the The Girl down for a good time, hell, I was the good time! 

2008 I became The Girl married to Dan. I am smiling now as a memory of us at Woody's just crossed my mind, and that busted white mini-van. 

After Dan, I was a different girl. I was The Girl who felt lost. I was The Girl who runs crying out of a grocery store, leaving her full cart because a man walked by that smelled like Dan's deodorant. I was The Girl filling out forms in doctor's offices and making a snotty-tear-filled specticle because my only options were, "single, married, or divorced"...I wasn't ANY of those things. 

As the lyrics of the playing song continue, the next verse catches me up to real-time:

Time flies when you're making babies
Do you miss your little black Mercedes
Do you miss the girl you once had time to be?

I think about The Girl I am currently. Almost 40, happily married with 2 extremely high-energy kiddos. I never had a little black mercedes, but time does fly when you're making babies. I thought for a moment: Yes, I do miss The Girl I once had time to be. I would go back in a heartbeat,  I would go back only long enough to look at myself in the mirror at each phase of my life and say, "The best is yet to come."

Jason sings, "I hope you still see fire inside of me."

There have been situations and circumstances that have definitely dimmed the flame, but I hope you still see fire inside of me.