I wrote this during a time of great defeat. Ultimate defeat? When you’ve lived a life of looking forward and pushing yourself to be resilient through horrendous things because you truly believe everything happens for a reason and one day all your hard work will pay off bc that is just how the world works…the UNIVERSE…GOD?

But then it doesn’t. So you try again. And then you fail again. And maybe it’s still okay because you are hailey and her way out of this mess will be through music and creation and love and light…and the path has always been clear, and has always worked, and she made it to LA…and then crashed and burned….

Tf.

The one thing that has always been my place of refuge, my companion, the arms that wrap around me and make me feel like no matter what it will be okay…gone. Not a breakup, not a traumatic event from childhood, not an abuse cycle…my MUSIC. My writing. My home. gone.

Then what? What is the point? Why am I here?

—-

This song embodies that feeling of naive hopefulness. Blind faith. Something a lot of us use to get through the day, the month, the year. A lot of my friends in their 20’s feel these feelings too. Growing up, leaving home, trying to escape the past and make your own future based on rules and terms you were told would surely work. College to jobs to family to happiness. A straight route that doesn’t work anymore. A world where ‘everything happens for a reason’ is a needed mantra because otherwise you might have to stop and see the bleeding wounds we are drowning in as a society. Pro-life, but not if they are a different color than you send them to the detention camps to rot. Justice for all unless they are the president, then it can be excused. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Nothing makes sense anymore. And that haunted me for 2 years. I suffocated in it. Until I realized…that was kind of the point. The cold hard truth. At first in a cynical way but now in a radical acceptance kind of way.

Choices and decisions only go so far, the world will still do as it pleases. Kick the delusion, the high, the craving, the fix, that you do good and good things will happen. That everything happens for a reason. This is true at times. But what is also true is that there are very bad people getting away with bad things. When we base our happiness on the outcome, our livelihood, our survival, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

I remember being a young girl, sexually assaulted in a small town. Having to move schools because of it. Thinking to herself, one day this won’t matter. One day I will escape these feelings of despair and humiliation because of my MUSIC. Do you know how close I got? My most viral song being one about abuse, r*pe, and abortion. Connecting me to millions of women and people who have been through the same things as me. We built a community, a stronghold. It was working. It opened doors for me I never thought I’d have access to, and I brought yall with me through every single one of those doors. And then it didn’t matter. All that hard work, all that hope gone in an instant. For almost two years I was in my bed. Lost. hurt. What was the point of it all, if after all of that suffering I would just be left with more…suffering? boo hoo.

Disillusionment

I was under an illusion. I broke free from it. Or I am at least currently chipping away at it as I type this. I was basing my survival, my happiness, my future on an outcome I had no control over. I am hailey, and I have been through crazy things but it doesn’t matter because one day I will make music and live off of being able to help others and expressing myself. I will have a success story. I will have the answers. I will overcome. I will overcome. I will overcome.

And what if I don’t? I am bad, I am a failure, I am lost, I am depressed, there is no point.

No.

Who are you when it doesn’t make sense. When there is no reasoning. When the bad guys win over and over again. When there is no pretty lesson to sum up the tumultuous journey. When the childhood abuse didn’t mean anything bc your parent got sober so let’s just forget about it. When the r*pist didn’t go to prison because he plays football and his family knows the sheriff. When the man you thought you loved bought you a ring, but then cheated on you and got married to that woman within the same year. When the dream you had was actually a nightmare that you never saw coming. Have you tried all of the things? Moving out of your parents house, getting therapy to forget the way he held you down, going celibate after that abusive ex, letting go of the one thing you love because it’s ‘what’s best for now’. Escape. Resilience. Regaining your power. Then losing it all. Over and over again.

I didn’t have it in me anymore to push forward. because there wasn’t a reason to. I was disgusted with myself. This song is that feeling. That hopelessness.

I discovered, very slowly (like excruciatingly so), that there is no need for a reason. In fact, I needed to discover who I was without all of the reasons.

And thats why the song ends with an extended verse that finally finds some breathing room.

Who are you when it doesn’t make sense, when there is no reasoning? We aren’t 20 anymore. We are growing up. This is adulthood. You sleep in the bed you made, or the bed they made. The fantasy dies, but not in a sad way. In a realistic way. This is reality. I am finally working with the clay in my hands instead of the thought of the clay in my hands. To be shaped, to be molded, to be true.

I found pieces of myself when my friends welcomed me back home to austin with open arms. When I flew to seattle to help my brother. When I took care of other family members through illness and pain and loss. When I watched the mother deer walk her two babies down my street. When i fixed my car. When i got a new job. When i laid in my bed. When I fell in love. When i cried myself to sleep. When i binge watched desperate house wives for the first time. when i got a coloring book. when i started collaging. when I started this website.

No reason. Just living. just weaving time and space together and seeing what becomes.

I am processing in real time. I am deciphering what is actually mine. I don’t have a finished story to tell you, I just have all of these feelings to share.

And ‘Everything Happens For A Reason’ is where I decided to start.

Enjoy.

-Hailey Orion Hernandez.