I Sat It Down Because it's Heavy.

The average person tells 4 lies a day, or 1460 a year- a total of 88,000 by the age of 60. And the most common lie is: I’M FINE.


I don’t trust you. Plain and simple. If you are a person that has come into my life in any sort of a relationship manner, you are not trusted. I think I should just maybe have this tattooed on my forehead or maybe I could just give out tickets with different level warnings of how much you are not trusted. Yellow to friends, Orange to hook ups and Red to actual dates/relationships.

I think I should go into conversations with the rehearsed line “Let me just get this out of the way now. It has nothing to do with you, it’s all me.” Ya know, the classic break up line. I will just use it as a starter instead. That way one has proper time to decide how to proceed with handling me.

I have self sabotaged so many relationships in the past 10 years that I would need a package of spaghetti to help me count them all (you can break spaghetti up into a million little pieces and count it…get it?) I think that maybe I can handle it and then I get into the first stages of something and let the crazy out. You know exactly what I’m talking about! We have all had that boy or girl that we didn’t trust and you pulled crazy stunts that afterwards left you thinking “Have I turned into a bunny boiler ala Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?” Well, guess what- no, you haven’t. You’ve just been hurt at some point or another by someone and never fully recovered. Those bits of broken are just poking thru in your brain and they have sharp edges. If they poke hard enough, they break through.

I have a bag full of excuses to use. “I needed more than this,” “I needed one more kiss than you gave me,” “I’m just not ready for something heavy,” and my all time favorite “You deserve better than me.” Each of one of those rings some truth but are kind of like an alcoholic that says he doesn’t want a drink. It’s a lie used for self preservation. I’ve become a master at preserving my self….and pickling myself with booze if we wanna be super honest about it.

I have some pretty good experience to draw off of though. 9 times out of 10, I find myself meeting people that I work with and becoming involved somehow. Well, in a normal world that works about 50% of the time. In my world that involved different cities with arenas filled with girls every night, it works about 1.8% of the time. I guess to explain my malady let me tell you a few stories.

#BadRomancePart1-

Oh, the excitement…picking up my phone and seeing a message from him. I was on tour in upstate New York and had picked up a new phone on the off day. It was one of those fancy new machines that resembled a small computer…all kinds of new fun things to play with. While I was sitting in the office he asked me for my messenger name. He was kind short and stalky but had something cute about him. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, now I can. He was a douche. That’s what draws us to them 99% of the time, right? Well, at the time I didn’t think any further than “Wonder if he will by me a drink later?!” Doors were about to open for the show and I picked up my phone since there was a new different colored light blinking.

Lonelypeopletalktoloud: Did you get a chance to grab dinner yet tonight?
seemsInevergetenoughofme: nope, too busy! Crazy day!
Lonelypeopletalktoloud: I’m gonna have someone bring you a slice of pizza
seemsInevergetenoughofme: That’s incredibly nice of you ;)

And so it began. Obviously I am bowled over by common courtesy. Weeks on end of these messages. All times of the day. Load in, dinner, during the sets, and hours after the shows were over. Random questions of finding out about each other. It all culminated in us finally having dinner together after a show in Austin. He asked and I said I would love to. I was enthralled with the idea of actually talking face to face. Other than that the only face to face I got was during the show when I stood on the side of the stage watching him play and made faces at him while he looked over at me smiling.

I met up with him outside his bus and we started venturing down 6th Street. I believe it was St. Patricks Day so it resembled Mardi Gras on the streets. I remember him grabbing my hand and leading me through the crowd. That was it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted but it was something. We walked to the end of 6th Street and found a sushi place that was open at 1am. Prolly not a good sign but I don’t think either of us were worried about what we would be having for dinner. There was a nervousness in the air that could be seen if you had night vision goggles on. We sat down, ordered and I tried making conversation. I remember him sitting across the table and staring at me. Not just staring. He had a piercing ability with his eyes. It made me uncomfortable. I liked it. We managed to make it through dinner and I realized as we were walking out that this was the first person I couldn’t dazzle with ridiculous stories because he had more ridiculous stories that I could ever dream of having. I thought I did weird things to fill time. He told me that he liked to be the white guy that pulled up his hood on his jacket and walk thru the ghetto and see if anyone would mess with him. I didn’t know where to go with any of this. He grabbed my hand again and led me back down the street . We walked thru a park and ended up standing on a bridge. Here it was, that moment. The kiss moment. Nope. We both stood there awkwardly staring at each other. Finally I broke the silence and said “I’m gonna head back to my hotel.” He walked me to his bus and he said good night and I turned and walked away. Before I had turned the corner, there was the insescent little ding of my phone again.

LonelyPeopleTalkToLoud: Do you know how bad I wanted to kiss you?
SeemsINeverGetEnoughOfMe: Probably as bad as I wanted to kiss you.

And that’s how it began. The beginning is always so good, right? Well, let’s skip all the gross middle stuff and go to the even grosser ending.




Laying in a hotel bed in Detroit, I find it disconcerting that my phone rings at 3am. I hope that one of my “kids” haven’t been shot in the hood. I say that partially kidding and partially not. I roll over and grab the blinky loud machine.

“Yes, this better be important…”
“Hey, it’s Brig! Weird question…are you still hanging out with XXXXXXX?”
“Yeah, why do you ask?”
“Well, I just hung out with him all night…in Chicago…with OOOOOOO.”
“ummm…what? You are joking right?”
“I wanted to tell you so that you didn’t hear it somewhere else.”
“ok, I need to go.”

You can pretty much guess that was a sleepless night. I sat up most of the night wondering how to handle the situation. Did I call and freak out, did I pretend like I didn’t know and see how far the lie would go? Did I just straight up punch him in the face when I saw him? So many possibilities.

Well, you know what I did? I waited until I saw him on my messenger list and I wrote these simple words-

I don’t ever want to hear from you again.

It did the trick for a while. The grass is always greener on the other side, until that grass turns into a weed. And it always does. And of course, it did.

#BadRomancePart2-

He lived with me. That was the first mistake. When we met, I was needy for attention. He was willing to give it and needed somewhere to stay. Sounded like the perfect combination of desperation when I look back at it now. He toured, I kinda toured. So, he would for months on end while I sat home all week and waited for weekends to get out there and do my thing. He normally called every few days and always in the eveningtime. Never at night after the shows, he said he didn’t want to wake me. Yeah, should have been a sign. After about 9 months of this it all seemed so routine and normal. Almost good probably because I had just grown so accustomed to it. I remember, it was a Saturday. I was in the passenger seat of the van and Jeff was driving. We were somewhere in Southern Texas. Can anyone explain to me why all bad things happen in South Texas, btw? Again, one of those wonderful phone dings. I look down and see that it’s a number that I don’t recognize. I answer thinking it might be a call to advance a show. On the other end is a girl voice that asks if this is Misty. I say that it is and she’s asks if I am XX’s girlfriend. I say yes and she says she is as well and that there is a girl in California that is as well. I remember Jeff looking at me and asking if I needed him to pull over cause I must of looked like I was going to throw up or hit something. I told him no and asked her to keep talking. She was from the East Coast and had been seeing him off and on for a few years now…or when he came thru town. The conversation continued for almost an hour as she told me stories that I had heard of shows on the east coast only the details MUCH altered. She told me about the girl in California and how he had met her and I realized that she was the “intern” at the management office that was always calling him when he was home about band stuff. Not sure that I had ever felt so gutted in all my life. I felt like someone ripped my stomach out and fed it to me for lunch. I sat on the rest of the ride in shock and again wondering how to begin to handle this situation. I worked myself into autopilot mode for the rest of the weekend and when I got home on Sunday- grabbed a few garbage bags and started collecting his things. Ding, ding…

Goddamnit.

Even as I answered the phone I was unsure how to handle it. I answered and said hello and so did he and I lost it. There was screaming, there was crying, there was complete mental and physical breakdown. I had so many other frustrations in my life at that moment that I am certain I let every ounce of fear, hate and confusion out into the phone. He was speechless. There is only a certain point you can take your lying and when you are busted, you are busted.

I cried my way thru it a few times and then put on the brave face for a few weeks. Worked and acted like it had never happened cause if I acted that way, then it never did. He came home from his tour and turned up in my doorstep first thing. He begged, he cried, he pleaded. Of course, like all good girls do, I gave in. I opened the door back up. For what reason I still have no idea. I was broken, he was broken. Like I said earlier, it was a severe state of desperation.

A few weeks later at a show I caught him trying to kiss my roommate and then leaving the club with some other girl when he thought I had left to go to an afterparty. He actually intended upon taking her to my apartment. Fucking amazing.

It ended with him standing on the side of I-70 after I kicked him out of my car with his belongings. 3 of my best friends layed in bed with me for 2 days as I cried, threw up, screamed, laughed and went thru more Kleenex than any normal person would in a lifetime.

Again, he went away for a while. He has tried to return to no avail. Sorry, theres only so much one heart can handle.

#BadRomancePart3-

This one I really don’t want to go into cause I have wasted more than my fair share of time writing about him. The story of he and I was almost published in a magazine once after submitting it and it being referred to another. In hindsight, glad it wasn’t. They had Part 1 and 2 but needed me to write part 3. Yeah, Part 3 was the not so happy ending to the fairytale.

He and I met in Europe on tour of course. Crappy club tour with a bad metal band. He was the booking agent for the headliner and my band, the opener. Blah, Blah, blah…truck stops in the middle of the night, ice cream for dinner, airports and tears. Trips to see him in California when we got back, good/bad, good/bad, blah, blah. He has issues with the fact that I was the one touring and he was getting the late night phone calls from the road. Ego issues. Whatever. Thought we could work thru it.

Not so much.

He needed to go to Europe for a bunch of festival stuff for a month and I didn’t have a gig at the time so he asked if I wanted to stay at his place and dogsit, etc. Absolutely. Loved the dog, things were getting a bit better. Sounded like the perfect plan. Until the last week of his trip. The phone call.

Hey…so, how’s the dog?
Dog’s great! How’s Europe?
Well, interesting…
Really? How’s that?
Well, I’m not sure how exactly to say this but I met someone here. She is coming back with me. Can you be out of the house by the time I get back?
Ummm…yeah. Wow. Ok. Im gonna go now.
No, I don’t mean you have to leave now.
No, I mean I can’t stay on the phone with you cause your voice makes me want to throw up.

I called my friend Kristin to come get me and left. We had a few awkward interactions after that since we worked with the same band but once that was said and done, I haven’t ever heard from him again and I hope I never do.

So, you see- I have plenty of reasons. I can go down the list and tell other stories too but I think that those three pretty much explain it. No matter how I try in my head to not let the crazy get the best of me- no one has ever proved it otherwise. A dog is a dog. I call it as I see it.

Herein lays the problem. There must have been something a bit off about most of those self sabotages in the past. It was easy and I wanted to do it. Make it go away before it hurts me. You know, just another one of those crazy ways that we fool our brains into girl logic. I have had 2 situations that I didn’t want to end. One I did anyways because I didn’t know any better and had no way to stop the crazy from coming out until it was too late. It resulted in kicked in hotel room doors, me with a broken foot, screaming fights in the middle of Hollywood Blvd and one blur of a nightmare trip to Vegas. The crazy came out in full force. There was nothing that he could of done right. Every girl that walked by him, I was positive he was sleeping with. Every waitress or bartender, I was sure he had slept with when I was on tour. Every friend he introduced me to had to be an ex. I made things a nightmare. And I couldn’t stop myself. I was like Tornado Misty- here to fuck your day! I was drinking a lot then. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT. Of course, that made things even better. Give me a few shots and it was like pulling the plug on a grenade. The sad thing is that he is one of the most levelheaded people I know. Anyone less would have killed me or at least hit me once or twice. Thankfully he is also very forgiving. We have since become close friends and talk and see each other on a fairly regular basis. If there was any way in the world I could find a Delorian and Christopher Lloyd, I would Back To The Future that shit right away and take away all the harm and evil that hissed out of my mouth back in those days.

After him, I took a few years off that whole disaster that we call dating. I thought that if I had some time to myself I could learn and figure out some things. And I have. I have worked very, very hard on certain aspects of myself. Things like being so angry. What was I so mad about? Yeah, some people suck. It happens. Move on. And I did just that. I packed up and moved on. But then that stupid-ass cliché came back to haunt me- Wherever you are, there you are.

ARGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Why? Why couldn’t I leave me behind when I left me? Now, I’m smack dab in the middle of it again. I met one that I don’t want to push away. And man, am I doing everything in my head possible to not unleash the crazy. Manta’s to myself like “All men are NOT inherently evil, all men are not inherently evil”. Pacing circles in my living room to not pick up the phone. Shutting off all electronics so that I stop picking them up to check and see if there’s a new message, text, call, etc.

Do you know what it feels like to want to trust someone and just to of forgotten how?

I spoke with my friend Chris today who suffers from the same crazy that I do when it comes to relationships. I went thru a pretty traumatic breakup that he had with him and knew that he was the one to talk to. He has recently entered into a new one and told me today that the crazy just eventually goes away. I stopped dead on the phone and said “Wait, I don’t understand. It just stops?” Is he trying to tell me that at some point my brain will stop whispering things in my ears like “He is really the devil.” And “inside him lies a black heart with no soul.” Ok, I might of slightly exaggerated that part but close enough!

Chris seems to insinuate that slowly over time someone just deals with your nutsness and eventually you start to believe them. And from that you start to believe in them. I like to listen to him and take in what he thinks. But there is a part of me that goes…”yeah, but that’s not me.”

I guess what I’m looking for is someone to make that me. It’s gonna take someone that actually has enough confidence in themselves. It’s gonna take someone that thinks the world of me. It’s gonna take someone that might be able to deal with some crazy cause every now and then it’s gonna come out no matter how hard I try and shove it back in my brain. Todays is one of those days. The last 3 days have been those days. I can’t my brain out of a bad headspace. I can’t explain it and I’m not even gonna try to. I can only compare it to a bad acid trip that no matter how hard you try and get the bad things out of your head they leak back in until it just works itself outta your system.

There are few things in this world that are more important than trust. I trust myself. I’ve gotten that far. I think that is actually a lot further than most people get. I truly believe that most people live in distrust of their relationships for the majority of the time that they are in them. Some people are just better at the hiding it than others. I am not one of those. If there was a way that I could fix it myself, I would. I need help. I need someone holding my hand while I try.

Are you willing to hold my hand?

Cause I can’t do it alone.


“ I thought if I told you, you might want to help me to remain with you…I just want to stay a little while.”

“ this desert life, this high life, at the beginning of the day. No apologies, I wasn’t made for this for scene, I was made in this scene. I don’t want to go home, I want to come home to you . I want to tell you how I line my skies with all the silver I can use. I thought if I told you, you might want to stay for just another day or two…”