Save My Soul 🌻

Nashville has been utterly quiet tonight and I hate it. That’s when my mind starts thinking over everything I have been through in my life. 21 years old and I’m homeless on the streets with just my guitar. I’m always dirty from sleeping in old abandoned buildings.

I have to go down the women’s shelter to shower and get some old clothes they leave out for girls who don’t have any of their own. My red hair is almost always in a messy bun on the top of my head, no need to look good for anyone, I have my voice and that’s all I need. Most of the time I always pick baggy clothes to have some extra comfort when I sleep.

The nights are the hardest when creeps starts to follow me back to see where I sleep and if I’m alone, but I got pretty good at dodging them with my routes I take back to the buildings I stay in. I have different ones all around Nashville as I try to switch up my spots. It’s not the life I have always dreamed of but hey you have to start somewhere.

I have made $20 so far and I’m just happy I can get me something to eat before I move further into the city. I like to stay on the strip where most of the people come to visit bars and shows, that’s where I make the most money. I just wish I could get someone to listen to me sing or read the songs I write.

I know I’m not the best but when the children come around and dance to the songs I play, I feel like if I was to stop they wouldn’t have anything to look forward to walking down the streets. These kids weren’t your normal happy kids with families to go home to.

These were the kids whose families gave up on them or something tragic happen to them. They call them the troubled kids. I wouldn’t call them that though, there was nothing wrong with having dreams that no one else understood.

I know all too well what that’s like. Some of the families I lived with would hate when I would play my guitar and sing most days. That’s why I like being alone with no one to tell me when I can play or how loud I can sing. I can play all day and sing my lungs out with no drama.

No one to tell me to get a job and give up the one thing I am passionate about. I don’t just sing and write because I love it, I do it to get my mind to focus on all the good I will have in my life. I know it don’t seem like I have much now, but I have a hell of a lot more now then when I lived with those people. They would take everything from me, the kids would run around with no rules and not a care in the world, but as soon as I stepped out of line I would get punished for everything they did as well.

So that is why I sing to the kids who have nothing and know one. Because I know how freeing it is to not have to watch your back or raise kids being a kid yourself. I have no idea what it’s like to be a kid. I was always responsible for a kid younger than me. I didn’t mind most of the time they were just kids who needed love and affection. So that’s what I gave them, I loved them when no one else did. I would bathe them and read them bedtime stories.

I was always a mother before a child. I miss that the most. All their smiling faces and happy, hi are you busy? Will you play with us? Yes, that is what I miss the most. But when you turn 18 they send you out on your own with no job, no idea what and who you are suppose to be. They don’t get paid so you don’t get to stay. Well I’m fine with that. I just hope the children are being taken care of.

When I make it, I will go back and make sure they all have a happy home and food in their bellies. I will make sure they are loved and cared for. That is the first thing I will do when I make it out here in this big scary world. But until then I have to keep writing and singing to keep my mind at ease.

Well my day is just about over and this little girl comes up to me and ask me to sing her a song. I don’t normally do requests because I like to sing all my originals, but her face was too cute to say no to. She asked me to sing, Scars To Your Beautiful by Alessia Cara. I wanted to cry because it was one of my favorite songs to sing because it really hits home.

“But there’s a hope that’s waiting for you in the dark
You should know you’re beautiful just the way you are
And you don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart
No scars to your beautiful, we’re stars and we’re beautiful
Oh-oh, oh-oh
And you don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart
No scars to your beautiful, we’re stars and we’re beautiful

She has dreams to be an envy, so she’s starving
You know, cover girls eat nothing
She says beauty is pain and there’s beauty in everything
What’s a little bit of hunger?
I could go a little while longer, she fades away
She don’t see her perfect, she don’t understand she’s worth it
Or that beauty goes deeper than the surface..”
Oh, oh
So to all the girls that’s hurting
Let me be your mirror, help you see a little bit clearer
The light that shines within..”

“Thank you so much, that is my favorite song and you have a very pretty voice.” The little girl says with a shy smile, she puts money in my case and runs up to her mother still smiling at me.

Her mom looks at me and gives me a small smile and nods her head. Like she sees what I’m out here trying to accomplish. It gives me hope that there are kids out here with good parents who just want them to fight for their dreams and love them no matter what the choose to do or be. I envy those kids, like why couldn’t my parents just love me? what did I do that was so bad as a baby that they had to give me away. All I ever wanted was to be loved and to love them back. But hey I will take what life throws at me and I will turn it around for the better. I will always give and never take. Never.

Okay enough of the bad thoughts time to eat and go get some sleep. I have just enough to go buy me a magazine of my favorite singers and just dream I could live their life for one day until my day comes to live out my own dream.

I got some food and my magazine now time to make my way to bed. Today was a good day though, that little girl was the highlight of my week, so cute so innocent and sweet. She will do big things one day. She already has started with me by buying my dinner tonight. God bless her little loving heart.

I look over my shoulder and make sure no one was following me to my building for tonight, I rounded the corner and ducked inside a window of the basement. It’s dark and very scary but after 3 years you get use to it. I mean what other choice was there? If you want to get to the top you have to start at the bottom.

I climb the stairs and make my way to one of the rooms I picked to sleep in. It was the brightest room in the whole building, and it gave me a nice view of the city. I have a small flashlight but I like to save the batteries for when I read my magazines.

The room is a dark blue with one window and one small thin mattress a dirty pillow and body size cover. I found this place a few years ago when a kid use to stay here he told me I could have it that he has moved on. I was very thankful as this is my favorite spot in the whole city.

I have ripped out pages in my magazines and put them on the walls to make it look like one of my old rooms. I had so many posters on my walls from the other kids that use to live there and it just makes it feel not so lonely. I have big dreams and they are plastered all over the walls of this room.

When I wake up and don’t want to leave this place, I look up and see these pictures staring at me and I know I can’t hide in here because I will never make it anywhere if I do.