Page 27 of Pierce Me

Faith: There will definitely be screeching.

Manuela: See, that’s why we started this chat room in the first place.

*Incoming call from Eden Elliot*

Manuela: Behave yourself, Fee.

Faith: You behave yourself.

Malibu

five

I spend all of Christmas day asleep and exhausted. Two days later, I fly back to my house in Malibu, fully intending to immerse myself in writing music and enjoying the water. The private beach by my house is quiet, and I can finally breathe.

The ocean is peaceful, and I even manage to catch a few mild waves, even though I’m not a good surfer by any consideration. But it calms me and helps take my mind off everything.

Then I go to my studio to write.

And I discover that I’m well and truly blocked.

…

I hate my life.

I’m an ungrateful ass, aren’t I? Well, I do hate it. Correction: I hate what I’ve made of my life. I hate the life I have created for myself.

Case in point: I’ve never had any problems coming up with lyrics before.

The words seemed to be forever fighting their way out of me, and the trouble was keeping the song inside. Torture, it was torture keeping the words inside. They fought to be written on paper, to spill through the microphone, to be heard. They poured out of me effortlessly. There was pain in uttering them, but they kept coming and coming, and so the pain kept pouring out.

And the entire world ate it up. I guess my hurt resonated—I know I am not unique in it. I used to think that if my words could offer comfort to someone listening to them and help them feel less alone, it will all have been worth it.

But that was before. Before the paparazzi stalking my every breath, before the exorbitant demands of the label and the studio, before the humiliating articles, before the invasion of my privacy, before the sleepless nights. The pills. The struggle to stop taking them. The mess the messthe mess.

But suddenly, two nights ago in New York, everything came to a screeching halt.

Everything stopped mattering somehow.

For the second time in my life, I watched someone die in front of my eyes—or almost die—and I haven’t been the same since. I feel hollow inside. The past has risen from its grave. Not that it was every truly dead, but I was getting there, trying to kill it with every song… But now all my hard work has been undone.

The past is closing over my head again, and it takes a huge effort to even get out of bed in the morning. My friends call me multiple times a day to check on me, because it’s not like me to isolate myself. I don’t tell them I’m struggling; I don’t tell them that the girl who met my eyes in the arena brought back the trauma. That the fact that she almost died in front of my eyes sealed my fate, and now I can’t even focus enough to order food.

Or, once my assistant has ordered it, to eat it.

My musicians are zero help in the lyrics department; I’m the only writer of my songs, and that’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way I want it. I’ve never hired anyone to write with me or for me, and my musicians are just that: brilliant musicians.

Well, they are notmymusicians per se. They’re the label’s musicians.

To me they are my friends. My brothers. My everything.

Jude and Miki. My boys.

Jude is my bassist slash guitarist, Miki is the drummer and the piano. You would think he plays the piano, but nope. The dudeisthe freaking piano.

They are both musical geniuses, and I am an idiot next to them. I would be lost on the stage without them. From the beginning, we clicked so hard, it was like we were in sync. Inspiration doubled, tripled, every time we worked together. Little problems disappeared immediately as soon as we were all together. I’m closest with Jude because I’ve known him the longest, but I would trust both of them with my life, and more importantly, with my music. I trust them with my songs in every album, on every tour, in every show.

And everyone knows my songs are far more important to me than my life. I proved it, didn’t I, when I almost stuffed myself to death with pills just so I could keep performing. But that was in the beginning. I haven’t touched a pill in ages.

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