In 2014 I was in love with someone who was lying to me. I knew it, and I stayed anyway. That’s the part people don’t understand about those relationships. Seeing through someone doesn’t set you free of them. When it ended, it ended the way these things usually do. I was discarded, replaced, and left standing in whatever was left.
That’s where LOVE ARSONIST comes from, and it’s where this EP starts.
What I didn’t know then was that the relationship wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was what came after. I lost my confidence first, then my sense of who I was, then any control over my own life. I lost myself in sex and drugs. I lost my home. I was still here, but it wasn’t really me anymore. It was a ghost of me. GHOST 2.0 is about that man.
When you’ve lost yourself that badly, you go looking for anything that tells you you still exist. Attention. Validation. A message, a match, a night that made me feel wanted for a few hours. I chased all of it, and every time it left me emptier than before. SCROLLING is about that hunger, and how hollow it feels when you try to feed it from the outside.
It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. The drugs, the burnout, my mental health, it all came down at once. BURN is the floor. It’s also the moment on the floor when a quieter voice said, this isn’t living, it’s time to stop hurting yourself now, burn like a sunrise. It came from somewhere deep down inside me. I could hear it, and I listened.
What came next was slow. I trained and qualified as a psychotherapist, and through that training and my own personal therapy, I finally started to hear the deeper pain underneath it all. The pain the narcissist had taken advantage of. Without that leverage, they have no hook in you. It was never really about them. It was about the inner work I needed to do.
After twenty five years away, I started singing again. TIMES is about finally understanding that none of those years were wasted. Pain can have purpose, and through pain there is always growth. It’s about looking at life through the lens of gratitude. There are always things I’m still working through, but I’d forgotten to look at all the good things I already had.
The fire, the ghost, the searching, the fall, the turning point.
And then there’s LOVE UNSPOKEN. The song the whole EP is named after, and the only one you haven’t heard yet.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about getting better. You can do all the work. You can rebuild your life, find your purpose, get to a place where you actually like who you are, and still be on your own at the end of it. Healed and found aren’t the same thing. I’m recovered. I’m still lonely. I’m still carrying a love I haven’t had anyone to give to.
My quiet hope is my secret flame,
Still burning brightly without your name, what is your name?
I could have ended this EP on TIMES. Big chorus, happy ending, all wrapped up. But it wouldn’t have been true. Some of my songs resolve because I’ve made sense of that part of my life. This one doesn’t, because that chapter isn’t finished yet.
That’s where the story stops. For now.
Looking back at the fallout of 2014, and standing here today with a finished body of work, is honestly astounding. I’m incredibly proud, and grateful that I have this outlet to tell my story. Music saved me in a lot of ways during those dark days. It made me feel less isolated, less alone in what I was going through. Now I get to do the same for someone else.
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