The Mixtape

by Brittainy C. Cherry

I wanted to know what made a person tick. I wanted to not only see them in the sunlight, but I wanted to see their rain clouds too.

Unfortunately, we lived in a world where going deep wasn’t very common anymore. People lived on the surface level, showcasing the happy highlights of themselves.

Who wants an Oliver without an Alex?

While she needed someone to listen, I needed someone to stay.

She’d be devastated, as would I for breaking her heart. I wondered if kids knew that when parents had to break their hearts, ours shattered more. I didn’t know when we’d catch a break.

“Then there is no way we are poor. We have clothes on our backs, a roof over our head, a car to drive, and each other’s love. No one can be poor if they have love.”

Thank goodness for a person’s life story and how it sometimes intermixed with others.

If I caught up on one thing, another was falling out of place.

“You’re not weak; you’re strong.”

I’d learned quickly that motherhood meant saying no to yourself so you could later say yes to your child.

Don’t overthink it, Emery. Things will work out. They always have and always will.

Asking for help doesn’t make you a failure.

Though this wasn’t exactly the perfect dream. Reality never is.

I knew what it was like to go through dark days. I couldn’t imagine doing it with cameras flashing in front of my eyes.

So, I was the complete opposite of myself. Wonderful. Sober Oliver could hardly gather his thoughts to form a sentence. Drunk Oliver had enough courage to get into a bar fight.

“No, but you know what they say—there’s always tomorrow.”

“Belonging comes in different forms, I think. It can come from a place, a person, an object, an occupation.”

Sometimes it was easier to tell the truth to strangers. Your truth wouldn’t hurt them as badly.

My beautiful star who deserved so much more than I’d been able to give her. She deserved the world, and I was giving her crumbs.

When it rains, it pours, but the rain always stops, and the sun comes out again.

I was having a terrible day, going through my own deluge, and I couldn’t even fully process it because, before I could be fully human, I first had to be a mom.

“No life is better than another. They are all just uniquely different.”

The hardest truth to learn in life was that not everyone loved the same way you did.

“I’m still breathing, though, and I’ll call that a win.” That seemed so simple, but oddly enough I’d found breathing to be one of the hardest things as of late.

The oddest thing about life was how something could show up out of nowhere and change everything in a split second of time.

“You can do this, Em. You are a fantastic cook. Sure, you have no personal-chef experience whatsoever, and sure, working for one of the biggest musicians of our time can seem overwhelming, but you raised a kid on your own. You’ve kept her fed. You’re pretty fast on obtaining new techniques. You can do this; you got this,”

I understood that. But for me, when God felt far away, that normally meant I was straying myself.

Healing doesn’t walk a linear line; it takes the messy route. I believe that healing comes during both the dark days and the bright ones. It’s not all rainbows. Sometimes healing means slicing open the scars that made you hurt so much before and examining them to fully understand yourself. Why did the cut hurt you in the past? How did it change you into who you are today? What can we learn from the pain of your yesterdays to better your tomorrows?”

True success comes from within. And that success is defined by being able to wake up and have gratitude. That’s the goal. Now, that’s not saying that everything is perfect when you are happy. That’s not what happiness is. Happiness, gratitude, is the ability to wake up and say, yes, some things in my life are hard right now, but I still get to feel good about one or two things. You get to choose joy, even when times are tough.

Every person in this world has a mixtape of sorts, a collection of tracks that defines their lives. Each memory is a song, and they all come together to create a masterpiece. So, tell me about your story. What lyrics, what melodies, live on your mixtape?”

find yourself a man who will dance with you even when your heart is broken.”

“You’re an amazing mother,” I whispered, and she began to cry harder. “You have no clue how hard it is to believe that each day.” All mothers probably thought that. The ones who doubted their mothering skills were sometimes the ones who were trying their best, day in and day out.

“By shutting off the outside noise for a while—the good and the bad—and creating your own original song for your mixtape. You get to decide the good and the bad, and you get to now start surrounding yourself with things that make you feel good about yourself rather than bad.

“It’s a sad day when a person needs to use God to cover up their guilt for harsh choices in life,”

I looked back to find a teary-eyed girl staring my way. Her bottom lip trembled as she said, “Please don’t tell anyone about Reese and me. It would ruin my life. I can’t deal with that. I have a new beginning. People can’t know.” I didn’t say another word to her as I walked out of the building. I’d never tell a soul about what Sammie did all those years ago. But that guilt on Sammie’s heart? That was something she’d have to deal with for the rest of her life.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I took the now-sleeping Reese from her arms and laid her in the crib. “I’m normally not like this.” “You are today, and that’s normal too. There’s no wrong way to feel,” she told me. “So, go ahead. Feel it all.”