Of all the fucked up people I know, I am by far the luckiest.

At first glance you can’t even tell how fucked up I am, but I assure you: I am. Try to get to know me long enough and eventually you will see. Perhaps at 12:53am after that third shot of tequila. Perhaps when you innocently offer me mild & frank criticism in a casual tone.  I can’t predict when the realization will hit you, but eventually it will come, divine revelation shared perhaps by God, just like those weird rules He shared with Moses: “Holy shit. This girl is fucking nuts.”

But, like I said, I’ve got a lot of blessings to count.

I mean the big ones, right off the bat, are that I’m not dead by suicide or self-destructive behavior* and I’m not institutionalized. And there have been times in my life when I certainly felt like those were the three most viable options. One night in 1996 I hit the Batshit Trifecta: After a night of ruthlessly hard drinking that should have shut my internal organs down, I was determined to kill myself by slicing my wrists open with a Swiss Army® Knife…but the three-legged cat I was talking with at the time convinced me to hang on for at least one more day.

I’d say that night marks the nadir of my existence. I’ve been slowly crawling my way up the ladder to “normal” ever since.

The list can go on and on: I’m not addicted to drugs, I’m not in prison. The trust & anger issues that have plagued me my entire life have not resulted in me currently living in an unsafe, violent environment. I am a homeowner, (albeit a nominal, probably temporary one at best). I have a steady job that pays a decent wage for someone without a college education who is content to be considered in the upper lower class of society.

I am also lucky in that I am not on anti-depressants. I’ve never taken one in my life, although God knows I’d make a great candidate.  It hasn’t been easy, suffering through my inner demons and depressions and anxieties…but despite all the mental anguish I’ve endured, I am so glad that I have never let a molecule of one of those drugs enter my bloodstream and fuck with my brain chemistry.

The reason I suppose I’ve always been so anti-anti-depressant is because I’ve never felt like my brain was broken. Even in my darkest hours, I never felt like what I was feeling was unnatural. I felt like I was supposed to feel. My problem was that I didn’t know how to feel anything else. Taking drugs wasn’t going to teach me that.

My depression was created by some genuinely depressing events. I was raped for years by a friend of the family beginning at the age of four. Who wouldn’t be bummed after something like that? And then, just when I was trying to heal from that experience, (without therapy, mind you. I don’t think my stern Germanic vater believed in such weak-willed things), my brother hit puberty and decided that losing his virginity to me, his younger sister, (albeit not by blood!, he desperately reminded me as he was negotiating our sexual tryst), would make the most sense as “I had done it before.” So, you know. There went any chance of happiness in the 12th year of my life. (I never allowed him to fuck me, though. “Phwew!” I bet you’re saying to yourself. To get him out of my room, though, I did let him grope my ass once. I can still see his closed eyes and the pained, wrenched look on his face when, after I could take it no more, I turned around to get him to stop. The hurt on his face was genuine. As is the scar on my heart that moment created.)

Well, okay, you might be saying to yourself. That DOES sound pretty bad. I can see why you might grow gloomy and pensive from time to time.

But wait, there’s more!

In my 13^th year, my family fell apart. The father that I had barely seen over the past three years, as he had been working overseas, returned home to a line-dancin’, cheatin’ wife who demanded a D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Naturally, this did not make him happy. However, seeing as he was a survivor of 3 tours of duty in Vietnam, suffered from PTSD, and happened to be both drunk and high on cocaine when my mother told him to find a new place to live, he did what any man in his situation would do: He destroyed the house. Oh he didn’t set it on fire or anything disastrous like that. He simply shattered every piece of furniture, memento, and glass object that he could find. You could not walk into that house barefoot. Our poodle was scared shitless.  I wasn’t there at the time, as I was babysitting, (Specifically, I was watching Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage concert on HBO as the children slept and my father raged two blocks away. “Funny how you remember,” as Bob Seger sings in Night Moves.), but I heard that when the sheriff placed him in handcuffs he broke out of them by wrenching his arms from behind his back. I heard he broke his wrist in the process. (Cocaine is a helluva drug.) I heard all of this second-hand because I didn’t see my father again for another three years.

As you can imagine, I did not enter my adult years with the strongest psyche on the planet. I attempted many times, as is expected by society, to find stability and love and trust. Suffice it to say that I failed miserably at every attempt. So now I have cats. Lots and lots of cats. Maybe it would have been easier to live (and love) if I had only discovered that Zoloft is right for me…but I wouldn’t have been me. I would have been some serotonin-coated, chemically-enhanced version of me. Completely fractured on the inside, patched together with pharmaceuticals.

But, enough about that.  I do not wish to bore you with every sorry, sordid little detail of my life. (Although, since many of them are about lesbians, I bet you would love that.) This is not supposed to be a depressing autobiographical essay. Today I am writing about redemption and recovery and Rosanne Cash.

(“Wait. Are you sure¸ Laurie? Because you’ve written about some pretty dark shit here. I haven’t been able to stop crying for the past six paragraphs. ” Ssh. Ssh. I know. I’m sorry. It gets better. “And your brother sounds like a real asshole.” Well. We all have things we’re not proud of. I’m sure if he could take it back he would. But, yes. As far as I know, he is a complete douche. But, I could be wrong. We haven’t spoken in more than eight years.  We all deserve redemption, though.)

My life is better because Rosanne Cash is in it.

Perhaps I should start at Square 1.

Does everyone know who Rosanne Cash is? (Although, in this day and age, with your Googles and your internets, and your Wikipedias, I’m pretty sure you could find out easily enough in about three mouse clicks. But, okay. Let’s just assume you’re too lazy to do even that.) She is a musician, a songwriter, a writer, wife and devoted mother of five. She has been making music since before the internet was invented and in my humble opinion pretty much all of it has been awesome. I don’t know what she does with the shitty songs the law of averages states she must write. Maybe she pawns them off on Taylor Swift. <zing!>

(Why I had to go out of my way to insult Taylor Swift is a mystery to me, too. I sure don’t like her, though. Yeah, yeah, okay. She writes her own songs. <eye roll> Sure. Okay, fine. Hey, listen. My dwelling unnecessarily on my unnatural disgust and disrespect for Taylor Swift is not helping the overall message of this essay, so do you mind if I just stop talking about that elfin poser for just…do you mind? I’ve got to get back to this thing.)

Some of her hits include Seven Year Ache—tell me you at least know that one, for fuck’s sake!—Runaway Train—no, NOT the one that Soul Asylum sang in the 90s—and I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me. Her songs are available for purchase at iTunes AND Amazon.com. (Yeah. She’s that good.)

I have had Rosanne Cash in my heart longer than Rick Warren has had Jesus in his. I listen to a wide variety of music, and I consider myself a fan of many different artists. Each and every one has their own story to appreciate and respect. But none of them have changed my life the way that Rosanne Cash has, and there isn’t one that I am more devoted to.

If we lived in a world in which social media did not exist, Ms. Cash, (or, more accurately, Mrs. L., since she is married to John Leventhal, a world-class producer and musician in his own—oh, just Google him!), would simply be my favorite artist of all-time, not the life-affirming  demigoddess that she has become. But, thanks to Twitter, she gets to be that. Which must be thrilling for her, I’m sure. “My work here is done,” I imagine her saying as she closes her laptop for the night. “John!” she yells over her shoulder to her husband in the kitchen. “I can disable my Twitter account now! I’m a demigoddess.”

Give or take a minor setback or temporary nervous breakdown or two, my life has been steadily improving since that night in 1996 when Lefty the Calico Cat convinced me to put the knife down.  A couple of friends had helped me grow along the way. Their appreciation for me and patience with me went a long way towards healing my broken soul. Because, by 2008(?), I was pretty shattered. I was functioning, but it was almost all façade. Again, I don’t want to get into all the details, but there had simply been one too many nights curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom rug, sobbing, feeling wide-open and raw and exposed by some relationship that had once again failed. I had isolated myself, emerging from my coccoon long enough to work or perhaps go out and drink with acquaintances long enough to make jokes and get a good buzz on. But, I didn’t like myself, didn’t really ever confide in anyone, and was just walking farther and farther down the Road to Ruin. And then one of them convinced me to sign up for Facebook.

Before I joined Facebook, I was convinced that it wasn’t for me. Facebook was for people who had friends! And I just had the two. There was no need to be on Facebook for that…I could simply text them. Of course, I was completely wrong. Facebook turned out to be more rewarding and influential than I could have possibly imagined. Perhaps one day I’ll devote an essay exclusively to how much that has changed my life.

(“Is this an essay, Laurie? Or is it the Bhagavad Gita? Because you’re running a little long here, lady. Can you possibly maybe wrap it up soon? I’m pregnant and my baby is due in three months. I’d like to maybe get up from this chair once before my water breaks.” Your sarcasm is not good for your unborn child, Random Reader. It imbues the umbilical cord with bile, I read somewhere. But, fine. I’ll try to move quicker. I’m not excising that paragraph about Taylor Swift, though. That’s staying in.)

So, anyhoo.

By the time I joined Twitter and started interacting a little with Rosanne Cash, I had already emerged somewhat from my shell on Facebook. I was feeling better about myself, reuniting with long lost friends, and I was thrilled that my list of friends grew from two to four. And then to seven. But, I found myself falling back into the same patterns that had led my entire life to isolation and unhappiness. I was using humor to engage with people I hadn’t spoken with in years, but I remained distant and wary and hyper-vigilant about offences and insults. Part of me enjoyed conversating, (That’s right. I used it in a sentence. Roll your eyes if you want–I like it and it stays in.), with them, but another part of me was just positive that they hated me. (I know that sounds weird, but please remember the second line of this essay.)

A helpful thing to know about Rosanne Cash is that she is incredibly smart. Like, okay? She doesn’t simply craft these amazing songs that are mystical and layered and romantic and rich with emotion…she thinks about real-world stuff, too, and makes a lot of sense when she discusses issues. She is not some vapid excuse of a pop-star like some current Cover Girl spokeswoman who shall remain nameless but who is not       P!nk! I love P!nk. I was talking about the other one. No, not Janelle Monae. Oh, you know what, never mind.

Another thing you need to know about Rosanne Cash and her Twitter account is that she will actually talk with you if you write to her. I could spend half a page describing the various ways that celebrities use Twitter, but this is not a Twitter tutorial. Suffice it to say that I have never seen anyone use Twitter the way that she does. She tries very hard to respond to as many people as she can. I can only imagine how exhausting that must be. I was waiting in the lobby at her show in Williamsburg back in February and overheard a man describing, with awe in his voice, the tweet that she had sent to him. So I hope she knows that people genuinely appreciate it.

There’s this quote attributed to Ms. Cash that flows constantly across Twitter. If you look hard enough for it, you’ll find it. “The key to change is to let go of fear.” Twitter keeps saying she said that, so I guess it’s true.

And, when engaging with the one person on the planet you respect and adore more than all others, I suppose it’s easy to feel a little intimidated. But, unbeknownst to me, I took her advice, let go of my fear, and just…tweeted. And things have been changing ever since.

I can’t ascribe all the improvements to my life to the fact that Mrs. L. talks with me on Twitter. But she has definitely helped set a lot of it in motion. She has been the key to so many seismic shifts.

Ms. Cash is devoted to the English language. Luckily for me, I enjoy using it, too. And, so, what she has helped me discover, in the back and forth that we’ve had over the years, is my voice. Without even being aware that she is doing it, she has helped me bring my thoughts into sharper focus. It’s one thing to babble back and forth on Twitter with your dipshit second cousin who only writes in abbreviations and is drunk half the time and who isn’t going to remember it, anyway. It’s another thing entirely to speak with a Grammy-award winning musician who covets words the way Hugh Hefner covets playmates. I want to be absolutely sure I know what I’m saying to her–tone, language, quality–because I don’t want that tweet to be the one in which she finally blocks me. (“This dipshit reminds me of my drunk second cousin.” <block!>) I write with more intent now than I ever did. I’d like to think I am a better communicator because, like, you know, I’m all, like, on point and shit. (See?)

Ms. Cash has also helped me meet new people on Twitter. I don’t have a ton of connections on Twitter but, essentially, the ones I do have are all followers of hers that I started to follow, too. I barely even bother “retweeting” (rebroadcasting a tweet that someone else wrote so that everyone who pays attention to your stuff can see it) anything she writes because everyone that follows me follows her. I realize this is a very myopic view, but basically I don’t think Twitter exists without Rosanne Cash in it. Nothing in my world disproves that. Meeting new people on Twitter has, again, helped loosen up the shackles on my imprisoned mind. I mean, clearly, Ms. Cash has nothing to do with the friendships I develop amongst her followers–the bonds I build with them are entirely between us, and based on things that we have in common–but I still credit her for helping in that regard.

I think she also helped my self-esteem. I mean, I can’t say for sure, because there are some days that I can’t find it…but I am almost positive that she makes me feel better about myself. Yeah. She does. I mean, it totally sounds like star-fucking, but it feels really good when I can make Rosanne Cash laugh. Don’t get me wrong–it feels good to make ANYONE laugh. I have this one co-worker who sometimes chuckles and says, “Laurie, you’re so stupid,” and I LIVE for her “You’re so stupids!” Makes me so happy, you don’t even know. But I think being appreciated by Rosanne Cash turns a light-bulb on in my brain in ways that other interactions couldn’t. It’s not that her attention is more valuable to me than that of others–it’s that it is so rare and relatively difficult to obtain that it resonates louder. But, ultimately, her attention benefits everyone in my life because, of course, as I start to feel better about myself, I become a better person for people to appreciate. And my co-worker gets to call me stupid more often. It’s a win-win for everyone.

But, most importantly, by interacting with me, chatting with me and, in the surrealist moments of my life, allowing me to visit with her backstage, Ms. Cash has allowed me to do the one thing that I desperately needed to do. She has allowed me to love her. And for that I will never be able to repay her.

When you’re traumatized, scarred, shattered and distrustful, the last thing you know how to do is love. Oh, I cared about people, of course. Don’t forget there were those two friends who played such pivotal roles in helping me grow as a person. They gave me love, and I knew that, and I appreciated them so very much. And I loved them, I did. The best I knew how, at least. But in the back of my mind, I had a trapdoor in which I could escape. If they ever stopped loving me, I would be ready. I always kept something in reserve. For my survival, you see. I was never going to let anyone devastate me again.

And then Rosanne Cash, this woman I had admired since before I don’t know when, the woman who’s music penetrates my soul in ways that I’m pretty sure would violate laws in several states if it wasn’t consensual, listens to me when I tell her I adore her.

She has provided me with more comfort, entertainment, solace & wisdom than she can ever possibly know. I cannot fathom why anyone with her talent and career and intellect would ever bother to pay attention to someone like me. But I’m so grateful that she did.

The simple act of being able to open up my heart to someone has had more of an impact on my life than I can possibly explain. No one else but Rosanne Cash could have elevated me to that level of understanding, though, that’s the beauty of this revelation. I had expectations of everyone else I love in my life. I expected reciprocity. Naturally, being highly distrustful and suspicious and unable to see my own worth…well. As you can imagine, the bonds to my heart have never really been unlocked, and I’ve never quite figured out how to feel love without feeling bad about it. But letting Rosanne Cash know I adore her solves that dilemma. I don’t expect anything from her. She’s given more than I could ever possibly return. She’s not supposed to love me–that’s not in the rule book. And just being able to tell her I adore her…I don’t know. You people with your loving children and your happy marriages of 15 years, wow. You’ve really got something special there. Maybe you don’t even appreciate what you have. But for someone like me, someone so repressed that showing any kind of vulnerability was something to be afraid of? Being able to do something like that was unimaginable.

It goes without saying, (or it should), that I am referring to love in the platonic sense here. I know, I know, you would really like me to write more essays about lesbian fantasies, (“Even if you have to make them up, Laurie. Even if you have to make them up.”), but this awakening of my soul has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with my humanity and my ability to trust people and to live inside my own skin without wanting to crawl out of it. It’s about knowing my strengths and owning up to my weaknesses and not feeling ashamed all the time. It’s about not living in fear every goddamn second of every goddamn day. She’s looked me in the eye. She has endured with much grace and patience as I have tweeted her praises. And she hasn’t blocked me.*

And through all that she has taught me, I feel like some enormous pressure has been lifted off my chest. I feel closer to my humanness than I ever have been before. I feel more aware of my intelligence and my sense of humor and the power I have and the vulnerability I feel towards others. I am more alive. I am more present. I am more terrified than I have ever been, but it is a completely different kind of fear.

So, I thank her. I thank her in my dreams, I thank her every time I see her, I thank her in every random act of kindness I commit. She is so much more than a collection of songs. (Although, don’t get me wrong. Those are VERY good.) She is a life-affirming demigoddess.

Of course, all that’s more than a little fucked up. But, AS I CLEARLY STATED WHEN I STARTED THIS ESSAY, I’m one of the luckiest fucked up people I’ve ever known. Because I’ve met Rosanne Cash.

(*Yet.)