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Every fucking part of her.
Because she does that to me. She’s in my soul. Like a goddamn inferno she lights me up. And in this crazy world I live in, she’s the only thing that turns the dark into light.
I can’t see my tattoo on my wrist but knowing that she’s there, and that I have her but won’t ever have her is the most painful thing I can think of. Like a dream that isn’t real and you know will never actually be real, but have hope for.
Hope is the worst.
Because even as I walk to set… I hope.
Even for a glimpse.
A second of her. just a knowing that she’s there. And that I matter to her too. That this isn’t some make-believe thing like this clown costume I’m wearing right now—that this is real. We are real.
We.
God, what I’d do to be a “we”… an “us”… an “ours”.
How pathetic.
How sad.
That hope is the most depressing word you can think of when you’re trying to film and write a bestselling song that outdoes every other one you’ve worked on. I hang my head and keep walking.
And then the lyrics come to me.
“Hope is death when love is alive. Hope is dead because of lies. Hope is dead because of me and yet… it’s all I have—one day, maybe I’ll be free, one day, maybe I’ll be me. Finally me.”
I type it into my notes on my phone and I keep walking right into the sun, seems fitting with the words that just came to me. She is my sun. She is my hope.
I stare straight ahead at the set, at the girls all sitting in their chairs around them and I have to shake my head. Our fans. I am grateful for them. I am grateful for their love and support and unwavering loyalty… but here they are, on a reality competition show that is not real in any way, vying for love. For affection from a guy they don’t even know.
They don’t know the real Sookie. Or the real Rae. They know what is projected. What they’ve imagined in their minds at night or when they were at one of our concerts. That’s all they know.
The fake.
The make believe that our industry is so good at creating. The make believe is easy to adore, it’s easy to love. But the real… the real is work. It’s diving deep into the dark chasms of the soul. It’s seeing someone for who they are.
For who theyreallyare.
Not the fake, projected image a label creates.
No. it’s so different from that.
It’s the fucked up dark, tortured soul—that piece that makes us the talent we are. That piece that dangles dangerously close to destruction—the place we all play with. But it’s the piece that holds the art. It’s the piece of us that turns out the hits. That is magnetic—like a drug you can’t get enough of.
That’s the piece only the lucky will ever see.
I try to shake the feelings of annoyance and the pity party I’ve been having for myself and just tell myself this is a part I have to play for a short time—and that it will be over and the next show will come on, and I’ll have to do something crazy for that…
I take a deep breath and let it go.
First thing I notice is that apparently brunch is still happening even in our costumes—we just don’t get to eat it. Just watch.,
And the day just gets better.
We have forty extra minutes before they start taping and Lucas is the only one who isn’t in costume and the only one that doesn’t look like an idiot.
And the only one who gets to eat.
