877 miles later.

877 miles. a random number, really. but 877 miles later and I find myself back in Tennessee. My wooded driveway looks the same. The cold weather feels like it usually does this time of year. My mom still looks the same as she greets me (she never looks like she ages anyways). It’s 3:06 am but she’s waited up for me cause she loves me and is worried. I’ve just driven 13 and some odd hours from Miami, Florida to my home in Tennessee. 877 miles is a random number - but accurate- according to the GPS. Such a handy device. It takes you exactly to where you want to go and even tells you how long it will take to get there. Every turn, every exit, every hazard you are about to pass in .5 miles, every route that is better than the one you are currently on. it’s all automatic. Just put in where you want to end up, and if you follow the robot’s voice, you’ll end up there. 

Yep, everything is the same here at home. Besides the Christmas decorations, my home is just as I left it 8 weeks ago. I met some of the best people while I was away in miami. And I met some of the worst. I had 1/3 of my clothes stolen from the washing machine. got my car boxed in at a gas station. stayed in bed for a week straight having panic attacks (Zoloft and Prozac don’t work too well for me). felt worked like a dog in a broken society. Questioned my existence. questioned god. was offered drugs by too many people to whom all I politely declined. One of my absolute best friend’s husband and my uncle passed away- both of which I was unable to be home for. God bless and be with them.

 I also met a nice man who I paid $5 to take me back to my hotel in a golf cart. I attended parties that didn’t start till 3 am. I tried Colada. I took myself to nice dinners and said, “why not?” when people asked me why i was eating alone even though i’m so pretty. I ordered a beer at a 5 star restaurant and poured it in a champagne glass cause I can. I took a solo trip to the closest tattoo parlor that was open on South Beach at 12:30 am. even picked out what would soon permanently be on my body in about 5 minutes in the shop lobby. i complimented strangers. i went swimming in the ocean at 4:30 am. i told people my name was chelsea at the bar. my friend and i kept it up as long as we could without laughing. I also sat on the beach alone and played a borrowed guitar that was way too expensive for me to have out there in the dark of night. I did that a lot. Not the borrowing an expensive guitar thing, the sitting on the beach thing. The last night, I sat out there before I left, and A kind couple approached me. The girl asked if she could give me a hug, that she sensed some sort of overwhelming sadness within me. I knew she had some sort of intuition within her, or she was an angel, because I only ever came out there to sing or to cry. So I thank God for that moment.

I thought I wanted a GPS for life, but there isn’t such a thing. and it’s kind of stupid to want something that is impossible to exist. Not even God acts just like a GPS. I wouldn’t want to fit the creator of the universe inside of my phone anyways. I could list 877 moments that have changed my life forever within the past 8 weeks being away from home. Even though I come back to the same GPS coordinates i call home and have known my whole life, the girl i am and who the world knows as Jessie D will never be the same. in good and bad ways- depending on how you look at things I guess.

I know in my heart I was made for more, and now I’ve seen it with my eyes that more is possible and the world is a lot bigger than the deer farm i grew up on. There’s been constant war in my mind of what my life actually looks like, and what I want it to be. I’ve gone back to the drawing board so many times, creating versions of myself that I don’t even know if I have chosen or if someone else has SUBCONSCIOUSLY chosen it for me. How do you know who you want to be if you don’t even know all of the possibilities of what you can even be in the first place? 

877 miles later, after watching the palm trees turn back into dogwoods, I felt the beautiful, lonely chaos of finding yourself in this life.

 I felt that everything is relative, and everything is subjective. Life is art, and so through art I must live. 

877 miles later, I know who I am. 

I’m an artist. 

“I made it down the coast in seventeen hours

Pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

And I'm a-hopin' for Raleigh, I can see my baby tonight

So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama any way you feel

Hey... mama rock me

Runnin' from the cold up in New England

I was born to be a fiddler in an old time string band

My baby plays a guitar, I pick a banjo now

And I gotta get a move on before the sun

I hear my baby callin' my name and I know that she's the only one

And if I died in Florida, at least I will die free”