Recently, on a visit to the Cut-Throat Club Online I found a song that one of my fellow Cut-Throats, Sunshine, posted.

I had all but forgotten about this song until that day. I’d listened to it repeatedly all summer long.

I traveled anywhere and everywhere over the last summer and the radio blasted most of the time. I had to drive, feel the push of the clutch, the stick in my hand.  I would decide when the motor revved and when it quieted.

I’d dreamt of liberation, I’d tasted it’s goodness, it smelled of sweet honeysuckle and it was good.  It also came with a price.  A price that I didn’t know I’d paid.

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“Who is this? Where did she come from? I don’t recognize her.” My anger bubbled and burst.

“Where am I? What happened to me? Where did I go?” Grief settled as dew on a barren soul.

The rubber met the road and I drove….hard and fast. Just not fast enough or hard enough to get away from the woman I’d become and not slow and cautious enough to find the woman I’d lost.

They said welcome back. They said they’d missed me. They said it was good to see the “real” me again.

They didn’t know that I’d died. They didn’t know that I’d become nothing more than a chalk outline.

Neither did I.

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I stood before *Jon* this week as neither the woman he’d killed nor the woman he’d created.  He didn’t know that the dead can’t speak.

In my death, Tee had risen and she walked away today, for the last time, with Victory in her hands.

Each victorious step leads to another step of victory.  It is you, my community here that gives me that gift.  Know that.

I’ve included the music video as a memorial to her.  Thank you Sunshine.

Don’t grieve for her.  She’s at peace now.

I’m at the wheel and I’m a survivor.