Burnin’ Down Our Villages

Burnin’ Down Our Villages

“You're gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe
I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I'm missing you
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh”  -Tove Lo “Habits” (Gotta Stay High)

A very wise man once told me that in order to regain sanity, control, and get over the loss of a lover one must burn the village down in order to rise again.

All is fair in love and war.

Before one can cover the village with gasoline and burn the motherfucker to the floor, you do need to do a little frolicking or what I call those brilliant flashes of “cray, cray”

Exhibit A, see the lyrics to the song above from pop dynamo Tovo Lo “Habits”.

It is currently the soundtrack to my on again off again love tryst with a certain blue-eyed musician.

Thank you, Tove Lo you just wrote exactly what most of my nights have been like without him.

I actually embrace and own these nights of “cray, cray”. Though my grandparents are probably looking down from the heavens at me in utter confusion as men chase me all around parties while I scamper around in pink tutus, I wander around Wilshire with open containers of hard liquor, or I sit and jam out to my guitar high on molly. For better or worse, these are moments that are going to shape me as a writer and as a person.

So, while we need those moments of passionate kisses, I also want to offer to you an alternative: we really do need those cray, cray moments where we make complete messes of our lives.

It is through these self-imposed catastrophes we can finally just light the match burn the fucking village down. What do we really have to lose at that point, really? I mean the shit is beyond repair at this point.

Kaboom!

I look through the shambles in my pink tutu and through the ashes I am digging around like a lunatic. I am not sure where to even start. How do you even rebuild? I mean he’s gone, you just burnt your village to the ground and you are all alone and crashing off of the molly. There is really nothing left to really write about either so you go silent and just sit with a bottle of Henny looking at the mess you created.

Good job, Lucy.

But, that is why every good writer is never left alone to her own devices. She always has a really good mentor (editor) to guide her through these moments.

“Dig through the rubble. Keep digging. Write about the one love you have been avoiding. It is easy to write about those recent ones. But, that first love never is.”

I am digging through my village. Pictures of my exes and then I pick up a small ring;it sparkles and is quite beautiful. I hold back my tears.

It is my wedding ring. Next to the wedding ring are my divorce papers.

So while, I may have gone off the deep end with my blue-eyed musician;It is my first love, I married and then ran away from to the mid-west with another man. I also never spoke of him nor wrote of till now.

But, I had to burn my village to get to this point.

There is a sense of urgency recapturing the story of my first love. Like the law of attraction, I might just get it right this time and will the love my life into my real life story. No more non-committal musicians, cheating grad students, and flaky photographers. I may just welcome back what I had with my first love, my best friend who always walked by my side and never let me fall from the heavens.

So the very wise man (my editor) was right, sometimes you do have to burn down your village in order rise again.

-Lucy Tambara

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