6
A Bad Year

My favorite book growing up was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Alexander has a really bad day. Alexander wakes up late and he misses the bus. His brother gets new shoes, but the store is out of shoes in his size. His siblings get ice cream, but his falls right off the cone. He steps in gum. He swallows toothpaste. He has to go to bed early. And he is convinced that his mom likes his brother better than him. His solution is almost always moving to Australia.

“I think I’ll move to AUSTRALIA!” he laments.1

And even as a kid, I knew he was on to something. Because some days you just want to stay in bed. Or move to Australia.

I began to think of the first year of my daughter’s life as the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year. It was like a bad day—the kind where you make it halfway through the morning and find yourself cursing your existence and rolling your eyes at all the annoying, happy people around you. But the bad day dragged on and eventually became months, and finally crept into a year. My daughter’s first year on planet earth was the hardest year of my life, and she, the new crying baby who refused to sleep, was my only reprieve. When your firstborn baby is the easiest part of your life, there is a serious problem.

Those are the kinds of days, turned weeks, turned months that drive people to their weaknesses. Working out. TMZ marathons. Vodka. Self-medicating. Tracking down old flings on Facebook. In my case, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Oprah reruns, and an unwritten sign on my back that perpetually read “Mean Girl.” Okay, and a season of too much vodka. A year of brokenness led me to becoming the worst possible version of myself.

By September of 2009 we had finally collected all of the insurance money and were able to replace our van, trailer, music equipment, instruments, and merchandise. But caring for a five-month-old while continuing to tour and dealing with accruing financial pressures were taking an increasing toll on my life. My primary care physician told me I was the youngest patient she had ever diagnosed with shingles and asked in a sharp voice if I planned on my life becoming less stressful in the near future. I stared at her blankly. That’s like asking someone if they plan on having less cancer in the future. I sure hope there’s less stress, lady.

Three weeks after the shingles diagnosis we lost our van and trailer all over again. I wasn’t in the van; I just got the phone call. It was late at night and there was heavy rain. They were on a dark country road; there was a curve, then a blind spot, and an oak tree that had fallen squarely in the middle of the street. The guys in the band were okay and that’s all I truly cared about. But the van and trailer—the brand-new van and trailer—were a total loss. The loss was so unreal it was almost comical. We were living in a perpetual plague of grasshoppers, crickets, frogs, and thefts. We were so Old Testament.

By March of 2010 almost a year had passed since our van and trailer were stolen and our baby was born. Nearly six months since the shingles appeared and the van and trailer had been totaled in the wreck. And then coming full circle, as if to tie up the year from hell with a pretty bow, there was that one particular week in March 2010 that I will never forget.

On Monday we came back defeated from a weekend of poorly attended shows and found that both of our personal cars had died. For the first time in our adult lives we didn’t have the money in the bank to fix them. On Tuesday my younger cousin drove over an improvised explosive device in his armored medical vehicle in Afghanistan, and he was fighting for his life. My family was broken as we waited on the jumbled updates. On Wednesday Annie woke up from her afternoon nap with blood running out of her ears and down her neck. She needed emergency surgery. And we needed $3,000 to pay the deductible; I had to call my dad and painfully, shamefully ask for money. On Thursday Annie had surgery. And on Saturday we flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to begin the spring tour of 2010.

In retrospect, leaving home after a week like that—a year like that—seems foolish. But in the moment, leaving seemed like the most logical answer. Something had gone really wrong during the first year of Annie’s life. We knew that much. We were living in a plague of Old Testament proportions, and it felt like we were cursed. Ryan and I convinced ourselves that the way out of our suffering was running away.

To Albuquerque, then Phoenix, Las Vegas, California, and Oregon. Shows were scheduled back-to-back for two months straight with Sanctus Real. And that was the answer: the cities, people, shows. The anywhere-but-here. As if you can magically dust curses off your hands like sand off your sandals and move to the next town where you are wanted. But running away almost never makes things better. We should have heeded the lesson from Jonah in the Old Testament. His running away earned him a spot in the guts of a whale.

If you are lucky, running prolongs your time a bit. But if you are really having a go at it, the breakdown of your dreams and plans seems to follow you whether you are on a plane, in an RV, or in Australia. You can’t outrun life’s unraveling no matter how hard you try. Still, we tried. We hit the road. It was March 2010.