A dozen angels have started living
in the holes in my heart.
They have put up hammocks
and started planting roses.
Last night, they had a bonfire
where they burned a box of my oldest regrets
and played drums until dawn.
These angels have made themselves at home
inside my imperfect heart
in hopes that someday
I’ll do the same.
-John Roedel
I took a road trip to my hometown last week to have some work done on my car. Seems straightforward enough. Except being home is never that simple. Since leaving five years ago, this was only the second time I have returned.
At birth, my hometown wrote a story about who I was supposed to be as a white woman—thin, upper-middle class, Jesus-loving, boy crazy, pregnant, athletic, slightly redneck, perfectly put-together.
Anything outside of these parameters was deemed “a curse” and, therefore, unworthy of love. The only acceptable path was impossibly narrow. Self-abandonment and an endless performance were required for belonging.
A dozen flesh-eating snakes started living
in the holes in my queer autistic heart.
They put up walls of self-hatred
and started planting thorns.
Being home as summer fades took me back to the fall of 2015, when I began my final year as a social work student. The only problem was that I couldn’t go 48 hours without drinking to the point of black out. Night sweats and other withdrawal symptoms haunted my every waking hour.
After showing up to the first day of classes drunk, I dropped out and voluntarily checked myself into rehab on September 10, 2015. Unfortunately, my insurance picked a rehab facility in my hometown, where snakes and thorns flourish.
Upholding the story of who I was supposed to be made me so sick that I ended up on my hometown’s Druggie Buggie, a staff-named bus. The venomous snake bites ate me alive on our daily trips to the local community center, where I saw old bosses, family friends, and past classmates. The thorn pricks drew blood with each church basement we inhabited, where I absorbed harmful, outdated addiction rhetoric.
That 21-day rehab stay felt like a humiliation ritual in a town that had given me a script of perfection.
Thanks to a lifetime of experience in performative survival, I completed the program and was “successfully” discharged on October 1, 2015. Needless to say, zero healing took place. Rather, the snakes and thorns quadrupled in size.
Unable to bear the poisonous mastication and internal bleeding, my second DUI arrest happened a few days later, on October 5, 2015.
There I was, twenty-seven years old, holding a new story my hometown had written about me—criminal, alcoholic, defective, powerless, worthless, failure, untrustworthy, threat to society.
My already snake and thorn-infested heart began filling with concrete blocks of shame.
Each night, the snakes and thorns had bonfires
where they burned my soul alive,
and the concrete blocks
banged together like tambourines,
obliterating me until dawn.
These snakes, thorns, and concrete blocks
made themselves at home
inside my imperfect heart
in hopes that someday
it would kill me.
Spending a day in my hometown left my whole body tense and in pain. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Showing up at the dealership where my brother works as the car breathalyzer girl might have saved me money, but it still took a costly emotional toll.
As soon as I got on the highway to leave town, I saw a life insurance billboard that took my breath away. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. God appeared before my eyes.
The billboard said:
PROGRESS
rewrite your story
The grief that I have felt since leaving my hometown five years ago has been astronomical. Creating a life without my family is the hardest thing I have ever done.
A part of me always knew, even at my drunkest, that I needed to get out to quit drinking. The way I left was not pretty.
But I did it.
And I’m here.
Spending this much time away has finally allowed me to evict the snakes, thorns, and concrete blocks from the holes in my heart. It has given me the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to rewrite my story.
The new story I’m writing for myself begins with…
A dozen angels have started living
in the holes in my heart.
They have put up cozy fall decorations
and started planting tulip bulbs for spring.
Last night, they had a bonfire
where they burned a box of old hometown stories
and held my astronomical grief until dawn.
These angels have made themselves at home
inside my imperfect heart
in hopes that someday
I’ll do the same.
Progress.
There were some fun sober times on Cronkright Street circa 2016/2017. Don't let all your Midland memories be bad 🙏