Hearing You Say I Love You

~*~One~*~

•AUSTIN•

Thirty.

Thirty was supposed to be the year that everything changed for me. Thirty was my goal year, my golden year. The year that I was supposed to finally be settled down. The year that I was supposed to have found my footing in the area I really wanted to be. The year where I was supposed to be able to balance my life between work and family. I was supposed to be at my peak but also be coming down slowly. Thirty was supposed to be the best year of my life.

But thirty has been far less than what I had expected it to be.

Yeah, I had found my footing. I had made the most amazing fucking friends that I could and fit in with them better than any other friends that I thought I had. My success switching over to country music has been far better than I ever could've fucking asked for. Everywhere I've played. Every song I've put out I have been getting mostly positive reviews. It feels fucking good too. To finally be doing what I fucking wanted to do from the beginning, but was afraid I was never going to make it. I feel like I'm home here and that's a feeling I never had when I was making my other music. I felt like I was never really appreciated as much as I am here.

But aside from that my life hasn't been touching any of the points that I mapped out for it. I thought it was going well for a while, thought I was ahead of schedule really. I thought I met the girl of my dreams, the girl that I wanted to be with forever but that ended up horrifically crashing and burning when I made my switch. Turns out that the country lifestyle wasn't really her thing. I took that to mean that since we didn't live within driving distance to Rodeo and weren't hitting up a party for my friends every other weekend that she wanted out.

It was a fucking punch in the gut. To think that you had everything you had ever wanted only to find out that you were nothing more than a walking ATM. I fucking blame myself to be honest. There were so many fucking red flags that I just chose to dodge or turn a blind eye too. The fights that we had. The weeks that we spent apart because she had to contemplate her life decisions whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.

She had the ring. The venue was booked. The date was saved. The guest list was already made. I bought a fucking killer house on a ranch in Nashville so we could split our time between LA, Utah and here. The reservations were made for the honeymoon, a month in the Amalfi Coast. A month of just the two of us talking about life and planning our future.

But that all blew away with the wind. Her walking away from me, telling me that she didn't love me anymore, that she didn't feel that spark that she felt in the beginning fucking killed me. She walked away without a second glance, without a second thought leaving me with a broken heart that I was slowly putting back together, a family that I desperately wanted to have but didn't and a timeline that I was slowly rewriting.

Thirty. It was anything but what I had hoped for.

I pulled my hat off my head resting it over my knee, my fingers raking through the matted down curls as I let out a sigh. Despite my successes here, the days were so long and so monotonous so...lonely. It seemed like the only way I was able to survive anymore was sleeping until late in the afternoon, waking up taking a swig of my warm beer that I had opened on my dresser from the night before, smoking a joint, dragging my ass to the studio to work on music for the deluxe version of my album and then hitting whatever fucking bar was still open afterwards getting drunk off my ass with the locals.

The guys had pretty much given the fuck up on going out with me, not that I blame them in the slightest. It was always the same fucking thing. The fun side of me started the night. Laughing with my buddies, singing to my favorite songs on the jukebox, throwing back beers, shooting some pool. But then asshole me finished the night. The regret, the depression, the fucking broken hearted side of me. The side that just wanted to say fuck life and live in the moment. Get as drunk and as high as I fucking could to forget every single bad fucking thing that happened to me until I blacked out and woke up at my house.