I was standing in the dark, with my microphone and torch in my hands on my makeshift stage – my bed with four, round, 30cm circular mirrors strategically placed so I could bounce the light of my torch off them to make it feel like I was actually performing on a stage, and of course, a large mirror in front of me so I could see my dance moves.
The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga was the record playing on my pink Playboy CD player. I was getting ready to ‘perform’ track 7, So Happy I Could Die – one of, if not my favourite track on the album. Something about this song made my 12 year old self think of a magic, ethereal and transcendent world when she listened to it: a bright, silver and holographic universe filled with glittery, shiny objects.
If you’re unfamiliar with the song, have a listen below. And check out the lyrical meanings here.
God, I loved this album so much, and Lady Gaga in general. She taught me so much about myself when I was younger, and taught me so much about creativity and authenticity. I’ve learnt to detach myself from celebrity culture and fawning, but I really do feel I have a lot to thank her and her artistry for.
My fondness of her music + other artists carried me through my early years. If I was at home, I spent many of my days as an only child with myself and my CD player; and if I was out and about, you’d always catch me with my iPod’s earphones in my ears (seriously, they were pretty much superglued inside of my ears lol).
I worshipped music. I loved getting lost in it – imagining the visuals, reading the lyrics in the CD booklet (am I showing my age here?? I hope some of you remember this too 🫣) and interpreting them with my naive youthful mind, and just feeling the power of the melodies that hit my cochlea. Music made me who I was, and opened up my mind to an abundance of subjects.
If you’ve read my story, you’ll know I spent my late teens and early twenties venturing of course from who I truly was.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with feeling different. As I got older and wanted to socialise more, I learnt to hide behind masks, and to become whoever I thought people wanted me to be, seeking validation through unaligned friendships, unwanted attention, and escape.
Wearing the mask exhausted me and left me craving an escape from the burnout – as I entered my early twenties, partying gave me the escape I needed. It helped me forget and gave me the illusion of belonging. For a while, it looked like I had everythinggg I wanted: friends who ‘liked’ me, a social life, travel – but it wasn’t really me, it was a persona I’d created to fit in...even down to the music I listened to. I FORCED myself to be into the music the people around me were into – club music with no substance that did nothing for the soul (side note: don’t get me wrong I love me some house music, but you know the type of club music I’m talking about 🫠)
Before I knew it, I’d mutated into a soulless, vain, characterless party-dependent robot with music playlists that matched my new form + configuration.
I’d become the lavender blonde.
I’d become the subject of that sweet song from my youth.
I’d become a personification of the So Happy I Could Die lyrics.
The cycle continued – burnout and sadness – and my mid twenties brought me a bought of depression. 12 year old me didn't know then what the song was actually about. The glitter, the mirrors, the magic, that’s all I heard. It would take years, and a version of myself I didn’t recognise, to understand that the lyrics were a prophecy in disguise the whole time.
Subsequently, an existential crisis hit me that left me questioning what life meant to me, not the rest of the word. This crisis was the beginning of the journey that brought me back home to myself. I found myself experimenting and reconnecting with the things I loved as a child, before the masks and pretending – which of course included getting cosy on the sofa with my headphones on and pressing play on the discography of Lady Gaga, which I’d not done for quite some time!
“All roads eventually lead back to the interests you had as a child”
‘Marry The Night’ played on shuffle. I sat up. I got goosebumps. I’ll be honest...I shed a tear – or two.
I'm gonna marry the night, I won’t give up on my life
I'm a warrior queen, live passionately tonight
I'm gonna marry the dark, gonna make love to the stark
I'm a soldier to my own emptiness, I'm a winner
I'm gonna marry the night
The tears wern’t sad tears. The tears were the physical manifestation of the internal realisation of how far I’d come...
I wasn’t the girl performing in front of her bedroom mirror anymore.
I wasn’t the woman who’d morphed into someone else – and someone else's playlist – to fit in anymore.
I was a woman who’d lived through a collapse and come out the other side of it whole – a warrior queen, if you will.
That very moment, I saw the lyrics through a different lens – the lens of a woman, not a girl. A woman marrying the night living inside of her.
I didn’t expect that reconnecting with the music that used to bring me joy would mean a deeper reconnection with my InnerWorld.
Music had always been a signal for me, the thing that told me who I was, even at times before I knew how to articulate it. I’d just spent a decade with the volume turned allll the way down, drowned out by everyone else’s noise, that I lost touch with my voice and inner signals.
I think we all have a version of this – a signal that was always ours, quietly playing in the undercurrent, even in the times we couldn’t hear it. For me, it’s sometimes the music. For you, it could be something entirely different – but I bet it’s still there, waiting for the noise to die down enough for you to contact it again.
And that’s exactly what this free gift is for.
Now, at 29, I’m unearthing my true self more and more each day, and falling head over heels for her. I now carry the confidence to be fully me, and to live a life that actually looks and feels like mine. I’m still figuring it all out as I go (but aren’t we all? lol), but I’m miles away from the persona I created, the version of me who was busy morphing herself into a mould that was never hers to start with – in both a personal and brand sense.
These days, when the noise creeps back in (which it inevitably does, because healing isn’t linear), the comparison, the feeling of being lost, the sense that everyone else has cracked some code I haven’t; I recenter sometimes through music, and sometimes through a page.
Writing/journaling about what I actually do, why I actually do it, and how I help others through my work, does now what Marry The Night did that night on the sofa. It turns the volume down on everything else, until my voice, my InnerWorld is the loudest thing in the room again.
Take this piece of writing as your version of that moment on the sofa. Read the prompts below, and free write whatever comes to mind.
Don’t feel the pressure to write something impressive, just aim to write something true to you, write without editing and let it be messy!! Hear your InnerWorld, your voice and your signal again...
Why did I start this journey of sharing my gifts with the world, really? Before I was exposed to what everyone else is doing in my space?
What would I long to do, create or share, if I thought no one was watching? when there’s no fear of being seen, no one to impress or compete with, and nothing to prove? (Not what I think I SHOULD be doing, what actually lights me up)
Who was I before all of the noise flooded in, before I started to feel like I am right now?
What would I defend, if someone challenged me on why I do this work, what would I find myself defending without even having to think about it?
Name one person/account/something that makes me ‘shrink’ – what is it that I think they/it has that I don’t? is this actually true? How can I reframe this?
Think of a time I recently felt compleltly unbothered and at ease – what was I doing in that moment? How did I feel? How can I bring this + the feeling into my life more?
