Therapy Sessions

Therapy Sessions is what happened when I stopped running long enough to hear myself think.

For years, I had different ways of avoiding what was really going on inside me. Drugs. Money. The streets. Jewelry. Pride. Anger. Other people. Sometimes even music.

It was easier to look at what happened to me than to look at what was happening inside me.

This project started when that stopped working.

At 31, I found myself questioning things I had believed my entire life. Things I thought made you a man. Things I thought would make me happy. Things I learned from people who, looking back, were probably trying to figure life out just like I was.

I had to start asking different questions.

Who am I without the drugs?

Who am I when nobody is around?

How much of my pain came from what people did to me, and how much came from the decisions I made afterward?

How many people did I blame for abandoning me while I was abandoning myself?

And if I know all of this now, what am I going to do with it?

That's where these songs came from.

Some nights I'm talking myself through the urge to get high. Some nights I'm rolling in my sleep thinking about money, my future and whether I'm doing enough. Sometimes I'm opening old memories I don't know whether I should keep or bury.

Sometimes I'm angry.

Sometimes I'm ashamed.

Sometimes I miss people I know I can't go back to.

Sometimes I'm learning that loving somebody doesn't mean they belong in my life.

But this project isn't only about what I'm leaving behind.

It's about my sons and the kind of father I want them to have. It's about the woman who showed me that peace could exist inside love. It's about family I wish I was closer to, people I hope escape their own demons, dreams I still want to chase, and people who aren't here anymore that I wish could see me now.

It's about God.

It's about recovery.

It's about responsibility.

And it's about learning that changing your life doesn't happen the moment you decide to change it.

There's a space between the person you were and the person you're trying to become. That's where I am.

I'm growing. I ain't grown.

Therapy Sessions isn't me sitting on the other side telling you how I figured everything out. It's me documenting what it sounds like while I'm figuring it out.

There are breakthroughs in these songs, but there are contradictions too. I can be grateful and still want more. I can be clean and still think about drugs. I can forgive somebody and still need them away from me. I can take responsibility for my mistakes without pretending nothing happened to me. I can love the person I'm becoming and still have days when I don't like the person in the mirror.

That's real life.

Maybe therapy isn't always somebody giving you the answer.

Sometimes it's finally getting quiet enough to ask yourself the question you've been avoiding.

These are mine.

Welcome to Therapy Sessions.