AmyJay Rocks
It's been a long journey...and I'm still not there yet. No surprise if I don't actually reach my destination. Partly because I'm not entirely sure where it is.
But I look back to the naive 17 year old with brown curly hair, staring out of the window of Uni Sound on Chatham High Street in 1998, deciding that she was going to ‘make it’.
Maybe she wasn’t naïve at all. Maybe her dreams were just untainted. I still believe you can achieve anything.
But for me my journey has been about finding out what it is that I want to achieve.
I poured my heart and soul into that first band. Everything I had and everything I was. Looking back I realize I lost so much in those years that I can’t retrieve. Everything and everyone else lost all importance. I was desperate to change who I was and become someone else in order to fulfill this destiny I had created.
After 2 years, Dusq finally blew up in my face and I was left devastated and broken hearted. My whole existence had depended on the success of something that had no hope. I had always known it had no hope. If I’m honest…although even saying that now irritates the scars.
I’ve always been fascinated by pain. I don’t think I cope with it in a conventional way. I don’t think I cope with it at all. There’s a strange mentality within me that says ‘if it hurts, you must be doing something right’. Maybe it’s my religious up bringing that has installed this philosophy in my mind.
But when my band dissolved into non-existence, I refused to let go. I ran around for years trying to find the pieces to stick it back. Still my whole existence was centered around something that didn’t even exist. There were no pieces to retrieve.
Pathetic.
Some well known individuals in the music industry were drafted into my life. I suppose they saw my Daddy’s Mercedes, and saw his little girl with the nice voice. A few secret deals were made and there I was in London standing behind a £10K microphone.
They cut my hair off. They told me I looked ridiculous. They told me I wasn’t thin enough. Every night I went back to my little bedroom in South London with my crazy hamster and hid from the world. I don’t understand how I did it. How I didn’t crack. Not then anyway. Not in those first couple of years living in London. I just lived in denial. In the hope that these people who now had control over my life would bring me happiness. Happiness in those days was a record deal.
No, happiness in those days was acceptance.
But how could the pop industry accept a girl who hated them? I hated them so much. I hated everything they were. I hated everything they stood for and I refused to be changed by them. Yet on the surface I struggled to be what they wanted me to be. To please them. I remember turning up to the studio one day and being told that my coat was nice. I hung onto that compliment for months and months.
Years on you can look back with a straight head. It was all just a masquerade. They used me as a scapegoat for their own failures. They held me down until I cried and then told me I wasn’t strong enough to make it. But by the time they were done, I was unrecognizable as the girl I had once been.
I can’t remember how it ended. I guess you get to a point where there’s nothing left to give. You’ve lost everything that ever mattered. There’s a loneliness so deep down its hardly detectable.
But still I was holding onto the past. Still I was infatuated with a memory. I was in love with someone else’s life. My experiences from years ago were choking me…and yet I still looked longingly back at them.
I went from producer to songwriter to band. All of them promising success and fortune. Many of them already there themselves. But it was like an invisible wall surrounding them. One I couldn’t break through to join them.
Back then the tears fell often. But I felt nothing inside. I’d curl up in bed and my chest would feel so tight I could hardly breathe. I’d pray to God on my knees to save me. I wanted to be changed inside. I hated who I had become. I had never meant to make it so hard. It had only been a dream…just a 17 year old’s dream…that turned into a 23 year olds nightmare. A recurring nightmare.
But you know things do change. Whether you believe in God or not, most people end up on their knees at some point praying for change. It seems to be a human nature to cry out for someone or something that is outside our own selfish little world.
At the age of 26 I’m starting to understand who I am. There are still many demons locked up in my head. But I’m dealing with them. After 5 years lost in London I eventually found people I could trust and have begun to learn the importance of having people close to you that you can rely on.
My music and band are still my life. I’m still obsessed and yes, I still make the same mistakes I made when I was 17.
But we don’t really ever grow up do we? The same playground fears follow us into adulthood.
I guess I’m just learning to be a 26 year old teenager and I want you to see that the Amy on the outside is truly reflecting the Amy on the inside.
