Champagne Confessions

I have hidden myself in plain sight. Not from shame, but from certainty, because the parts of me that speak the loudest don’t belong in the daylight. They live in the hush before thunder, In the pause before the bones break, they do not ask to be seen,they wait to be reckoned with.

When I was younger, cruelty wasn’t loud. It came softly, through parents who forgot softness, through friends who chose bitterness over loyalty, through moments that should have held me and instead dissolved beneath me. So I learned to perform, not to deceive, but to survive. The woman who could smile, deflect, produce, adapt. The woman who could be liked without being known.

 I never stopped mourning the parts of me I kept hidden.

Grief doesn’t always arrive in darkness. Sometimes it walks into your kitchen when you’re baking cookies after a five-minute cry, because five minutes is all I allow myself. I don’t cry to collapse, I cry to clear the fog, just long enough to reach for the sugar. After all something sweet should follow sorrow, because if I can make something rise, then I can pretend I haven’t already sunk.

The record player hums in the background, always old music. Vinyl that carries dust, ghosts, and melody. I wipe the counter with the back of my arm and pretend I am whole, that flour and fire can restore what was taken quietly.

I don’t trust emotions that come too easily. I recognize anger, and I recognize numbness. Occasionally, something gentle will slip through, something tender enough to make me flinch. A video, a memory, a voice. For a moment, I forget how to be composed.

I do not believe in love. At least not the kind we name and parade and post about. I believe most people want safety and call it devotion, I think we choose what looks right, we settle, we silence our hunger, and we script the rest. I don’t want love, I want alignment. I want to live on purpose, with clarity, with intent. I want a life that does not shrink me.

When the noise gets too loud, I return to the only thing that never asked me to perform: my horses. They are not pets, they are memory, they are mirrors, they are spirit clothed in muscle and mud. When I lay down in the dirt beside them, I am not resting. I am remembering. That I, too, am made of instinct. That I, too, can still be trusted.

Trust is not a soft thing, it is bone deep. It is hard won, It is discipline over time. A quiet choice made again and again. That’s what it means to ride. That’s what it means to belong to something bigger than yourself and never once be asked to be smaller.

And on the days when discipline feels too far, I let chaos carry me. I dance like a woman with nothing left to lose, socks on my chaise, limbs flung like a storm through my living room. My body becomes a rebellion, a ritual, something primal. Something mine.

My version of heaven comes before the sky breaks. It lives in that wind, the one that kisses your skin right before the storm, the one that lifts your hair and says: something’s coming. That breeze is the only thing that’s ever held me without taking anything. I grin into it like a madwoman,like a child,like someone who knows that peace isn’t found in stillness but in the exact moment before everything falls apart.

Not all lovers come with names. Mine comes in a glass. Dirty gin martini, three olives. Or two shots on ice. Or wine, when I want to lie to myself about softness. I never thought alcohol would be the thing that found me, but it does. It finds me in the silence, in the unspoken,in the ache. It loves me like a villain,whispers comfort, and kills slow. Some days I don’t drink, just to prove I still can. Today is one of those days. That matters.

Even my clothes tell stories. My shoes hold the aftermath of nights I don’t speak of. My handbags are self gifts, mile markers of survival. My jewelry? Bribes. Apologies. Promises from men who thought they could buy access to my soul and found themselves holding only reflections of their own failure.

I eat like someone who remembers being starved. Emotionally, spiritually, physically. Pasta that sticks, soups that fill, mashed potatoes so rich they taste like forgiveness. Tomato sandwiches when I need to feel eight years old again. Egg salad when I need to taste something ordinary and true.

I feel sadness in inconvenient places, like when I run over something on the road. I stop, I get out, and I cry. I’ve tried to save what was already gone. I’ve gotten into trouble for caring too much, but I’d rather face consequence than become someone who drives away and forgets.

None of these things are anecdotes.

This is not a sermon.

This is what it means to unzip yourself slowly, and offer your flesh without asking to be touched.

This is what it means to write without flinching.

To feel the storm and still walk straight into it.

To become the breeze before it breaks.