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you’re always 17 in your hometown

EmileeLeave a comment

I went to a private Christian school from kindergarten through 8th grade when my parents pulled my sister and I out the summer before freshman year. We homeschooled, and then after one year I begged to be put in public school. My friends were in public school now, and I wanted to be with them but really I needed out of my house. I was completely suffocating having nowhere to go other than church and it didn’t help that we lived 20 minutes outside of town. I ended up going to public school, but not the one I wanted. The one I went to my parents suggested because it had a legendary drama program and I really loved acting. I had no idea how much that decision would impact the rest of my life.

High school was so hard, but that’s normal right? Adolescence is rarely easy, however I was navigating this extra added layer of the culture shock of coming from one unique world and suddenly being thrust into this brand new one where everyone else was familiar with the lingo and each other and how things worked. As if being the new kid in a terrifying new place wasn’t enough, home life was really difficult, church was borderline abusive yet to me it was my safe place, and then I was being abused by my former youth pastor and adults didn’t believe me. I think back on high school with a different view than I used to. Before thirty, there was a lot of guilt and shame attached with it. There wasn’t necessarily regret; moreso I wished I could have been better. I put the blame squarely on my own shoulders, thinking that I just wasn’t enough somehow to be everything I wished I could have been. In spite of all of that, I managed to accomplish much, all things considered and deciding to go to public schools remains one of the best decisions I ever made, even with it being absolutely terrifying.

I joined theatre, and as such joined speech and debate. I wasn’t very good but I believe a lot of that was because I didn’t really try. Of course then I wouldn’t have said that, but with this 20/20 view of hindsight mixed with heavy doses of therapy I can now see how I actually was smart and capable, but the overwhelm of everything else going on was so overwhelming it consumed all of my spare energy that I normally would have dedicated towards actually trying. It wasn’t until I enrolled in college this summer that I realized I am smart and ironically have also been given a chance to redeem myself with speech and debate as well, having been recruited for the speech team after my public speaking class this summer. My teacher could tell from my first 2 minute speech in class that I was trained by my high school speech teacher, Charlotte Brown, and convinced me to join the speech team. It felt oddly full circle and at the same time I fought so many different thoughts and emotions I didn’t necessarily expect. I was such a different person 20 years ago, yet so much of me remains the same; the good bits, I’d hope.

Today was the celebration of life for Ms. Brown, who died in August of this year. I don’t think it really hit me until today, I could have sworn she was immortal. I was especially bummed that I never got to tell her about joining the college speech team as no sooner I joined we learned her health was starting to decline. I’d like to hope I know what she’d say to me about it. It helps, too, that my college speech teacher was also trained by and did her student teaching with Ms. Brown. She gets it.

It’s because of her I had the guts to go today. I knew I wanted to go, but my anxiety was spiking, in part knowing I’d see people I hadn’t seen in 20 years. I was never bullied in high school or anything like that. The other kids on my squad were nothing but wonderful, even if some were more wily than others. We were all high schoolers, going through our respective teenage experiences, coping the best we knew. However, despite all the horrors I was told in certain religious circles that I would experience in a public school, I found nothing but support there while the bullying came at the hands of my fellow church youth group members. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to be shunned or anything by who I’d see there, more just uncertain of how I would feel.

Many of these people were people I looked up to back then. I was drowning, struggling to keep my head above water with everything life was throwing me, but I didn’t even know it. I thought this was normal—privileged, even. In my efforts to tread water, I looked to those I respected, and many of them responded in kind even though I can’t imagine it was necessarily easy to deal with me. I know that when I’m in places like this, especially haven’t been there in decades and now adding in being surrounded by people who were also surrounding me 20 years ago, I tend to go right back into feeling like I’m 15, 16, 17 years old again. It wasn’t as extreme as I expected, thankfully, but it was jarring. What do I even say to these people? They, for the most part, grew up together, at least to an extent. They have remained main characters in each other’s lives, while I was and remain a sort of background extra. Of course, I’m over thinking everything I said, as one does. And I can’t help but wonder; do they know I’m the me I am now? Can they tell? Could they back then? Surely we’re all different simply because we’re older, right? But I was different different, even though bits of me have carried through. Did they still see me as that little lost kid? Will I always be a little bit of her, no matter how much time passes?

What I do know is I was met by each of them in kind. They hugged me, said it was good to see me, some even invited me out to whatever plans they had afterwards. I might have gone had I not been needed back at the studio. Part of me really wishes I could have gone because maybe then they would see who I am now.

I know I don’t have anything to prove. Most of these people I’ll probably never see again, which is a weird feeling in and of itself. And I know I’m a background character to their high school experiences, but do they know that in each of their subtle ways, they helped shape the person I have become? Do they know that I learned from their kindness and patience and show it to others? Do they know they were the first person to foster my love and dream of dancing, which became a major player in my life? Do they know I still occasionally quote bits of their HI’s even though no one has any clue what I’m saying or why? Do they know that when I look back on my life before 30, I don’t remember much of it, but there’s patches that stand out and even though high school was extremely difficult, and my senior year with Ms. Brown amongst the most difficult, that they stand out as bits that I can’t forget? Do they know they aren’t in the part my brain has hidden to protect me from the pain of my past?

Do they know the gift that is?

Probably not, and I don’t know if they ever will, and that’s okay.

It’s extra weird to process all of this while still living on the land I returned to every day after school. I may be different, but my surroundings are much the same. I’m still in this town surrounded by people who I hope to avoid most days.

And yet, here we all were again on this day, and I’m reminded of the good that can be even and especially when days seem most dark.

First Autumn Semester

EmileeLeave a comment

At this point, we’re fully a month and change into the autumn semester of college. I’m only taking two classes this semester, which is by design as I’m currently still working two different jobs. The other classes I could have added in don’t have to be done in any particular order, so it’s easy enough to delay them to next year when I’ll have less on my metaphorical plate.

Everything started off well enough, and then as I tend to do I started to really begin to doubt myself. It wasn’t absolutely glaring and weighty; more of a sort of still, small voice creeping in, asking me things I didn’t dare voice out loud. “Who do you think you are?” “What makes you think you’ve going to be good enough to be an interpreter?” “Honestly, this isn’t going to be everything you expect it to be. Might as well just get used to disappointment now.”

So much is riding on my success, but in different ways than people might assume reading this sentence. It’s not like a typical-college-aged-person’s set of pressures, my parents don’t have any set opinion of me on this, honestly I don’t think they ever expected me to go to college but that’s a whole other post. My pressures are wholly personal. If this doesn’t work out, I can’t afford to move into town in a house that is mine and not in my parents back yard. If this doesn’t work out, I won’t make enough to do more than just survive with the way the economy is going. All the hopes and grand visions I have of living entirely on my own that would have seemed impossible even just 5 years ago are just waiting on my finances to catch up, but without this degree and the possibilities it allows, they will remain out of reach. And while I’m grateful for the tiny house on my parents land, mentally this isn’t the best situation for me. I’m trying to make the most of it, but there’s only so much optimism can do for a person, especially one who seems to be living an existence that could inspire many different plot lines of quite intriguing books such as mine.

In all this, I told myself to just keep going. You’re already here, you’re doing the thing, you might as well keep going unless or until it gives you a reason to stop. You’ve barely begun and there’s so much left to experience that could surprise you. Do your best and see what happens and take it all in stride.

No sooner I did, I had a week where two of my three classes left me feeling like I’ve made the right decision. The first happened on Monday’s ASL 3 class when I walked in and my teacher asked me if I could help her. She had a call she had to take at 9am, which is the same time our class starts, and she asked if I could lead the class in reviewing the unit we were on. She said it shouldn’t take long, but if we get through all of that, she gave me the papers for the project we were to work on afterwards. Now I’m not sure why she asked me. I’m typically the first or second person in class, so it’s possible it was simply because I was available. Whatever the reason, she knew she could trust me to do what she asked and also that I was capable enough to handle doing such. I was nervous not so much for the task—the program we use has videos of Deaf people showing the proper ways to do each of the signs—but mores of my fellow classmates opinions. I don’t know many of them enough to recall their names (I’m trying!) and I think I’m the only (or one of the only) one(s) without a connection to the Deaf community already. I tried to keep my brain quiet, and everyone was kind and attentive, asking good questions and pointing out if I had my hand wrong (thanks, Roland!) When our teacher finished her call, she let me keep going, until she had stories she was telling which had her going to the front of the class to be seen by everyone and then she went ahead and took over as it was most logical. When I sat down, one of my new friends, Taylor, gave me the sign for cheering, which was really nice. When we left class, my other friend Drea told me that I did a really great job and my signs were very clear and understandable. It was really nice to hear, especially as that’s something I’m typically concerned about internally—that my signs aren’t clear or don’t make sense. Leading the class in the review made me feel similar to how I felt when I first started teaching ballet classes. I noticed then that it made me a better dancer as I was having to think more critically about each step I was doing in order to properly teach it to my students. With this, I was having to think more critically, paying attention to the NMM’s (Non-Manual Markers) and hand orientation than I may have typically. Really, I was grateful to have been given the opportunity to challenge my thinking in a way I hadn’t attempted yet.

In Thursday’s Intro to the Interpreting Profession class, I was the second one there and again my teach came up to me shortly upon arrival. She asked me where I worked and I told her I worked at the Courthouse and the Ballet Studio. She asked me if I’d be interested in volunteering the following Thursday (this week) at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Center’s annual fundraiser event. I’d need to be there from 3-9pm and wear all black. I told her yes, that would be great! I get off work at the Courthouse at 3 but I could leave a little early and my ballet job is only on the weekends right now. She was so relieved. Again, I’m not sure why she asked me and my brain can come up with numerous conclusions, but the fact remains that in asking me she is giving me a vote of confidence in my abilities to be successful in volunteering at such an important event to our local Center. This will also be my first real time among our local Deaf community, having missed out on the previous Friday’s “Deaf Chat” event I was hoping to go to.

Now that the event is two days away, I’m nervous as hell. I don’t have too many details about what to expect, only where to be, at what time, and what to wear—which, arguably, are the most important details. I’m sure I can figure out where to go and who to report to once I get there, but the childhood version of me that was too afraid to ask an adult I was familiar with for a glass of water when I was thirsty has made herself known again. There’s also the added uncertainty of if the person I will figure out I need to report to will be Deaf or hearing; I’m going to err on the side of signing as that makes the most sense in regards to respect.

I know one day I’ll look back on all of this with a completely different view that can only come with experience. Just knowing that that version of myself is possible for me to imagine gives me the bit of courage I need to face all of the anxieties that scream at me and would normally result in me cowering under the covers safely in my bed instead of facing whatever it is. I want this more than I’m scared of it.

Stay tuned, y’all.

In light of Taylor Swift (finally) owning her own work.

EmileeLeave a comment

31 May 2025

I became a Swiftie right before the 1989 album released, so by the time reputation came out I was all in. Back then, the fandom was centralized on Tumblr and followed Taylor’s instagram and the speculations were that there would be some secret album called Eclipse that she would drop the night of the eclipse that August.

We stayed up late, just in case, freaked out as Taylor’s entire social media was wiped, and lost our collective cool when we first saw the snake. We were rewarded with the first single called Look What You Made Me Do from her upcoming album, a noted difference from the musical stylings of her five previous albums, and we ate it up like a lavish Thanksgiving dinner.

I don’t know what time I finally was able to fall asleep after the excitement, but I don’t think it was very long as I was developing some concerning symptoms that would later upend my life, one of them being extreme fatigue. When I woke up the next morning at 6:30 unexpectedly, the air felt different even inside my house. I looked out my window and the sky looked different in ways I still struggle to explain. I grabbed my phone, checked the radar, and saw that the hurricane that was slated to go south of us moved in the middle of the night and was now aiming straight for my county. We weren’t planning on leaving—we never leave—but this one was making us nervous. My sister had a 2-week-old baby and quickly she and my mom as well as her in-laws were on the road in the direction of Austin and out of harms way. Dad and I were staying behind with the dogs and to hopefully fend off looters. As we worked to secure everything on the property to avoid projectiles, we became increasingly nervous. By 10am dad and I had a discussion, loaded up the dogs, and followed our family, 2 hours from the suggested evacuation cut off time.

We passed National Guard vehicles going in the opposite direction and ended up in a hotel that also had Red Cross vehicles, lying out of harms way but poised to jump in to help in the aftermath. To say it was surreal is an understatement.

I sat on the hotel floor, watching storm chasers while also going on Target’s website to pre-order the reputation album and the magazines that were being released, pausing briefly to wonder if there would be a home to deliver to by the time it shipped and how would I change the address if not. Whose address could I use? Whose would be left?

I stayed awake riddled with anxiety, watching storm chasers as they showed places I knew well blown completely off the face of the earth, describing what couldn’t be seen in the darkness, wondering how my family that stayed behind was faring. They were told to write their social security numbers on their arms with sharpie so their bodies could be identified later. It was all surreal. (They survived, thankfully.)

The next morning, Dad received texts from our neighbor who stayed and we heard his horror story of holding their door closed for the entire duration of the storm while his wife mopped the never ending stream of water and their chickens blew away. He checked on our house which was still standing but ended up having to be stripped down in what was a nearly 4 year endeavor to get my parents back into their house. Dad heard from our neighbor and we learned of an open route we could use to reach home. We filled up any gas can we could fined, loaded up the dogs again, and headed home. Once we surveyed the damage, seeing the full extent of their house, fired up the generators and plugged in the fridges, we drove to the outskirts of the nearest town while dodging downed telephone poles and the cast offs from the cotton fields that covered the roads until we found a bar of service to call mom. As we parked on the overpass of this now ghost town, I pulled up YouTube and watched the lyric video for LWYMMD, trying to memorize the words and get the proper cadence to the chorus, not knowing the next time I’d have service to hear the song, wondering what I was missing in all the excitement everyone else was experiencing.

I don’t remember much of the next few months, and the preceding year is quite a blur. Not only did Hurricane Harvey obliterate my home town, my health was in sharp decline. By Spring 2018, I had to quite my job and stop dancing ballet because my health had gotten so bad I was nearly passing out at the simplest task. I was also losing friends to various different things in one of my biggest years of grief-by-friend-death that I’ve known, which if you know me you know is saying something.

As I found myself faced with all of these terrible things happening at once, all of this loss and change and grief and pain, there was a moment when I was walking from my parents trailer they were living in to my tiny house in the back yard that somehow faired best of any of the houses. I looked at the tree that held up the storage building next to my house which kept it from taking out my north wall. I’ve named this tree Fred, and he was in bloom. I thought back onto everything I’d lost, and considered everything in front of me. Every nerve was raw and, as someone who didn’t know how to let herself feel let alone grieve anything that was happening, I realized I had a choice:

I could stay the way I am, making the choices I’ve always made, doing what I was told and living a life that wasn’t serving me, or I could try something new. 

Somehow, I knew deep down that the choice I had to make was the latter. If I wanted to survive, if I wanted to not become the ward of my parents and then my sister once they’re gone, if I wanted any hope of taking my life back and improving any smidge, I had to ask myself two questions with any thought I had:

Why do I think that? Who told me to?

Sounds simple enough, right? Oh, sweet summer child. “Simple”, yet it would go on to be the string I pulled that unraveled the sweater I had been stitching my entire life.

I started small, “Why do I think that I have to keep this job that I’m passing out at? Who told me to stay here?” Well, my parents told me this is the adult thing to do, and that life is hard so I need to just learn how to deal with it because it’ll be hard anywhere. So I quit. 
”Why do I keep going to this church, even though the drive alone drains me and sets me back for the entire week, and I don’t feel like it’s adding anything to my life? Who told me I have to go?” Well, I go because I know everyone there. If I don’t go, they’ll definitely ask questions. I can hear them already in my head talking about me when I’m gone, speculating as to the real reason and assuming I’m a “heathen” or “fallen off the wagon” or whatever other things I’ve heard them say about other people. I’ve been raised in church my entire life, deeply committed, purity culture poster child, salutatorian of a bible college. I thought back to after I was in a bad car accident, and how no one from this church reached out to see if I was okay, and instead they assumed I was disgruntled and left the church. I was without a car and injured, not bitter or disgruntled, but they assumed. So I left. 

On and on I used this metric to peel apart the layers of my life, identifying the different things that actually caused me stress which was triggering my health issues. Over time I learned I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, an inflammation of the brain stem that causes issues similar to that we’ve since seen in Long Covid patients. I had to get a handicap parking placard because I didn’t have the energy to walk a grocery store, let alone stand up long enough to make the food. I was pricing wheel chairs, but my chiropractor, the one medical professional who believed me, told me to avoid getting the wheelchair as long as I could because, “once you’re in the chair, you’ll never get out of it.” I couldn’t afford one, anyway, uninsured and now unemployed, except for teaching ballet classes at my studio which consisted of me sitting on a stool and pointing with a stick while my assistants essentially did everything. I owe my studio owners so much for allowing me to adapt the way I needed to in spite of it all. 

Now, it’ll be 8 years this August since the hurricane. I’ve managed to slowly but surely push my baseline in ways I didn’t even expect. While I was considered relatively mild back then, I’m definitely considered mild now. I learned my ME was caused by stress (shocker, I know) and triggered by my inability to eat monounsaturated fats after my gallbladder was removed. Turns out it didn’t need to be removed, and my issues were caused by a genetic condition doctors said I didn’t have called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which affects connective tissue, and a co morbidity called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which is where (TL;DR) your body is sensitive to histamines. Once I learned this, I was able to know how to treat, fuel, help my body and slowly work my way back to a baseline that allows me to not only work, but also as of this week begin college classes. 

My therapist asked me on Thursday how it felt to be in school. I told her it feels fake. This degree is something I’ve wanted for 20 years but wasn’t allowed back then because my family couldn’t afford it. Then when my health tanked, I never thought I’d be able to handle the course load to do it. So much so, that I never even considered it until a friend of mine heard me mention it casually and she said, “Well, why can’t you?” and when I tried to list all the things, she debunked them, gently, one by one. Finally I said, “I can’t do math, Rose” and she said, “Emilee, there’s AI now you’ll be fine.” Listen, I’m not a fan of AI and avoid it as much as any human can, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t that I would use AI for any math class I have to take, but moreso that I felt supported. I realized in that moment that I had friends now who knew math and would be more than willing to help me. I’ve built a life filled with people who add to my life, not just suck it out of me because I’m helpful and convenient. 

It used to be difficult for me to listen to reputation because it brought back really painful memories from the hurricane and the life I used to live before. I got to go to the reputation studio tour, though I couldn’t drive to Houston because that one limitation I still have even to this day, I had a friend graciously offer to go with me, even though she didn’t care for Taylor’s music and stayed somewhere else while I was at the concert. I took my cane with me. My phone fell outside the stadium, only breaking my back camera leaving me only with unzoomable selfie camera and my polaroid. I remember so little of it from my own memories given my physical limitations at the time affecting my cognitive function, but I was there.

As the Eras Tour came around, I was too afraid to be disappointed (at no fault of Taylor’s, mind you) and thus ruining things that I almost didn’t even try for tickets. When I decided to at least try, I panicked when I didn’t get them first day, being thrown to the back of the line instead of the front with our reputation tour boosts. Thankfully they corrected the second day and I scored tickets to Kansas City night one.

My fear was rooted in experience, but what I forgot in that fear was all the things that were happening last time that weren’t happening this time. I was a completely different person then, living a life I was told to live, grieving the loss of friends who had died and ones you’d decided not to be in my life anymore, figuring out the limitations of my illness, filled with so much uncertainty. 

But now?

Now, I’m living a life I’ve chosen, filled with people who love me and actually care about me as a person. I’m working a job I enjoy, going to school for my dream degree. I’m setting myself up for a life that is sustainable, where I won’t have to rely on people who don’t understand me and who bring me down simply because they’re the people I know. I’m building a life where I am enough. I’m doing the work to unlearn everything that doesn’t serve me and relearn the things that make my nervous system stay calm. I’m learning to trust myself, my voice, my inner knowing even if it offends someone else. I’m learning not to disappoint myself even if it disappoints others. I’m working with an incredible therapist who, ironically, lives in the town we evacuated to and who has done more for me in our 16 months together than I could have ever hoped for in a lifetime.

As I stood in my kitchen making eggs this morning, I was thinking about Taylor’s letter she wrote about being able to buy all of her previous work, and how reputation was so perfect she couldn’t imagine how to improve it in a re-record. And now she doesn’t have to. And at first, I felt that pang of hurt I’ve felt from the pain I experienced during the release. But then, I played the album, safe now to stream without lining the pockets of assholes.

And what filled my head was memories of Eras Tour, memories of redemption, memories of recounting seeing Karyn in Houston in 2018 and how much this album still does truly hold up. I could listen to these songs and not feel pain, but feel freedom.

And I stood there, and I thought, “goodness, this feels like it would have been such a perfect representation for when I took my life back” and as I started to think, “I wish it would have been around then”, I realized, it was. 

This album was what I was listening to as I stood next to Fred, considering my next options, every nerve exposed and emotion raw. This album is what I played as I was taught by my dear friend Nargiza how to learn to grieve. This album is what was playing as I made hard decision after hard decision, playing as I built myself back, playing as I made new, true friends, playing as I reclaimed myself.

This album was introduced to the public the exact day of my life that I point to when people ask if I can remember the day everything changed for me, and it’s been with me ever since, and now it’s with me as I stand here, a new person, living boldly the life I was always meant to and building a life I’m so proud of. And I can stream it, knowing full well that Taylor gets all of the credit for her work after her long, hard fight to do so.

What an incredible ride.