The Tree, Maren Morris
I’m done filling a cup with a hole in the bottom
I’m taking an axe to the tree
The rot at the roots is the root of the problem
But you wanna blame it on me
I hung around longer than anyone should
You’ve broken my heart more than anyone could
Trying to stop me won’t do you no good
I’ve already planted the seeds
Ooh, do you hear that?
It’s the sound of a new wind blowing
Ooh, do you feel that?
Heart letting go of the weight it’s been holding
I’ve made miracles in the shadows
But now that I’m out in the sun
I’ll never stop growing
Wherever I’m going
Hope I’m not the only one
I’m done filling a cup with a hole in the bottom
And screaming the truth to a liar
Spent ten thousand hours trying to fight it with flowers
When the tree was already on fire
Yeah, the tree was already on fire
Ooh, do you hear that?
It’s the sound of a new wind blowing
Ooh, do you feel that
Heart letting go of the weight it’s been holding
I’ve made miracles in the shadows
But now that I’m out in the sun
I’ll never stop growing
Wherever I’m going
Hope I’m not the only one
Ooh, do you see that?
It’s the light of a better day dawning
Ooh, do you hear that?
It’s the sound of a tree falling
Ooh, do you hear that?
It’s the sound of a new wind blowing
Ooh, do you feel that?
Heart letting go of the weight it’s been holding
I’ve made miracles in the shadows
But now that I’m out in the sun
I’ll never stop growing
Wherever I’m going
Hope I’m not the only one
Hope I’m not the only one
Hope I’m not the only one
Isn’t it funny how as you heal one thing, others rise to the surface? Some times that which we think is dead is triggered and we must once again bare ourselves to the bone.
Way down to the bone, to 20 years of struggle.
I do not get the luxury of communication, partly at least, I think because it’s something I’ve asked for and when the puzzle pieces get like this, anything I think or feel or ask for is rejected by default. And so as a result, there is some concluding and assuming that takes place in place of information. I am human, after all.
I keep fighting for myself to matter. To be a whole person here. It costs me so much more than you can realize to do so.
But I won’t let some things go on. And that is the muddying of the waters to my kids, who deserve the truth and deserve peace for God’s sake, and deserve to grow up without all this hashing things out over and over and over and over.
The Tree was already on fire. Dude, the Tree was already on fire!
I asked for the first divorce six months before I called an attorney, which was four days before I ever met or spoke to the biggest mistake of my life. To act as though that relationship ended due to one thing, one meeting, one issue is silly, short-sighted, and simply untrue. It shouldn’t be a part of any narrative ever. A lot of this shouldn’t be.
Years and years of tears, of work, years and years of trouble, years and years of attempting and wishing and therapy and conversations and books and times apart and community resources and a million other words to signify that some people cannot love each other. Sometimes things need to E N D.
But what also should END is constant punishment for it. Move f o r w a r d. Move o n. Be thankful for the choices that I made, that led you to what you have now. Sometimes you have to stop watering a dead tree. Both then, and now.
Peace is possible. Friendship even, was made possible. I’m not perfect, neither are you. There will be frustrations and anger. At times our core focus aligns and other times it makes no sense. But to move so far backwards into war, I do not understand. Every end, every hurt is different, but no one can hurt you more often than someone you lived with without love for fifteen years. Loveless.
I look in the mirror now, today, this year, 2024, and I see the face I haven’t seen since I was 20. I see myself, as I looked before. BEFORE. Him and him. Before. It’s the weirdest thing, whose face was I wearing all this time in between? She looked like someone else. I look every day and I think “this is what I was supposed to look like.” When I look at that other face, I see myself crying alone in a little duplex wondering how I got there and why I’d had to leave my friends, I see myself crying alone beside a little toddler bed worried I’d lose a child I’d raised for two years. The first time, the first time I went through that. I see myself going out to water flowers every day at 6, sneaking into the bedroom in government housing to watch Gilmore Girls for 55 minutes of solitude, to being told a baby in me was dead, to packing alone, to getting on my literal knees to ask for help or change or a decision, to watching an airplane take away helping hands for seven weeks, to going to surgery after surgery alone, to walking myself to the hospital with complications in my PICC line- alone, to being up, alone, to making decisions, alone, to writing every check, alone, to making hard calls and carrying all the weight along the way, alone, to asking my grandparents for rent money again, to the time our friend bought a small brown box that had clock arms on it and a four was meant to signify I had a note to read in it, a symbol of affection I’d begged for a million times, which it would be set to exactly once in almost 15 years. To thinking I was incapable of being loved or wanted.
I look in the mirror today, and I see the face of the girl who doesn’t live like that. And maybe she never did. Like I woke up years ago and said “this isn’t the person for me, I need out of this marriage right now” like I did several times, only I followed through with it in this alternate universe.
And I finished my degree, right where I started, as my daddy said last month, and I had THIS life, less tears, more peace, not feeling emotionally drowned every damn day. I see her face, the other Rachel. She’s still without, she’s still alone. But she’s laughing. She’s fucking laughing. She’s reading and writing and editing, she’s keeping up with bills (just barely) and being real and authentic and raw and letting people help her and see her and know her and she’s operating in the world in true form, with flaws and mistakes and messes and breakdowns, and karaoke and smiling, and laughing and margaritas and new friends and old friends and books and soup and a little plant and music she likes and words she is allowed to say and space to dance and whatever the hell she wants to do. Because she can. I love other Rachel. I would never trade my children or change the path of becoming their mother, never in one million years, but I find that perhaps there was a way for Rachel and other Rachel to become one person in this coming year. That is my plan. Take an ax to the dead tree, fight for myself, protect my kids innocence and peace, get as much time with these teenagers as possible before they grow up and out, and combine Rachel and other Rachel into one gal. Leave the rest behind, dead and buried.
“Now that I’m out in the sun
I’ll never stop growing
Wherever I’m going
Hope I’m not the only one”
rachel marie; towriteaway 