The Bon Jovi album “What About Now” (March 2013, Richie Sambora left the band in April) contains a little known song that is a far cry from Bon Jovi’s trademark anthems.

It is called “(Does anybody want) What’s Left Of Me”.
And although I don’t know when he wrote it, I think it would be quite possible it was around the time of a very well-read interview for the Guardian, in 2010.

An interview where Jon Bon Jovi admits his struggles as well as how they’re ultimately built-in to who he is:

“I was that kid with the report card that said: ‘Doesn’t play well with others…
I couldn’t be in a situation where someone else was controlling my destiny.
I’m probably not really a candidate to be in the army. Or working at the factory. Or…
I have to sink or swim on my own merits.”
JBJ in The Guardian

Three years after that interview they’d release the album with the song What’s Left Of Me, and guitarist Richie Sambora walked out.
Which makes me wonder, having the exact age Jon had when he gave that interview:
Is today even the positive milestone I think it is?

Did I really make it through my own personal version of Hell Week, with the biggest mental health crisis in over a decade?
Or is this just the warm-up for my best friend walking out, getting vocal problems, being screwed in a business deal, my record company betraying me, and oh yes, ten years from now I will not be able to do my profession for two years because of a global pandemic?

In the light of what’s to come, do I get to celebrate today?

Or is it best to just admit that the downfall has begun and since career-wise I am NOT at the level of Jon Bon Jovi, I have basically missed my chance at life?
Just asking.

Worst case scenario, let’s assume my feeling I hacked this is short-lived, and will round off to zero some day very soon, then I believe there is all the more reason to celebrate this today.

So?
What happened?
Or maybe not what happened, but why do I feel like this could work?

That the purpose of Hell Week was not to break me, but to build me up?

Ever since I started writing under an alter-ego in 2006, I have been aware that there is a very large part of me, that I do not express nor am (as in be) in daily life.

That “she”, the alter-ego, the pure artist to whom I have frequently referred to as “the real me”, is too much for daily life. And that honestly, I don’t want it to be out there either.
I m very much okay being more neutral under my real name.
It allows me to not bring my “real” art into daily life, and it gives me a rest from that very intense part of myself.

And besides, who is to say what is real art. Maybe my best work is the more neutral one. 
But nevertheless, the situation has been unclear for years even to myself, and every now and then I need to recalibrate.

Hell Week was a perfect time for that.
And this is what came up:

All my work under my real name is fun, lighthearted, great way to make friends.
It’s about Bon Jovi!
It’s about little bear Puux! (see Twitter)
It’s about playing around on my art blog World Between Worlds.
It’s the things I do when no one is watching nor paying me, but also:
The things that do not hurt. Not myself, nor others!!

This blog and all the other things I do under my real name, stays on the surface. It doesn’t cut to the bone.
It’s the things that you’re okay with if your installation mechanic would find, if they Google you. As if they would have time for such nonsense but you catch my drift.

And then everything else, including Hell Week, goes under the alter-ego.

And that’s when I saw two things!
1. That who I am under this identity (real name) and how I write on this blog, was already very much described by me in a piece called
The Baby Koala Relationship
I already knew I was a Baby Koala when I described my part in a lasting romantic relationship. But I just didn’t know (at all!) it was more than a fairy tale story and was actually my daily functioning mode, friendship mode, daughter mode, caretaker of cats mode.
At the time of writing the piece The Baby Koala Relationship I had no idea I was already a baby koala the majority of the time.

And I also saw:
2. that Hell Week had been the result of me not knowing (1) that I was a baby koala.
I had made a huge mistake in assessing what I could do, or what I was up for. Which in hindsight had resulted in a very traumatized baby koala.

I had really made a mistake the equivalent of taking a four year old to the movie Hellraiser. I was an absolute mess.

And then my alterego stepped in, and she freed the baby koala and shut everybody out of our lives who had been within a ten mile radius of this insanely irresponsible choice being made.

What that Hell Week taught me is that I should do a full and complete audit of my life, the places and people where I am a baby koala, and where I am my alterego;
And all other places that require something in between?
Out!
Gone!
Entirely irresponsible!

You ll either get an upset (“upset” is already my mental health understatement of 2021) baby koala, or you’ll trigger the alter-ego to come out in daylight, and settle things her way.

Now that I can see why it all went wrong, I regret the mistake because of the damage it caused to myself and others.

But it feels good to understand why it happened because that means it’s preventable in the future. All I need to do, is make it clear that I m a baby koala.
(If you re reading this: hi! I am a baby koala! Don’t forget!)

But it may be too late.

That the chances that three years from now, I ll write an album (book) everybody will forget, with a song few will remember, without the loved ones around me that I lost between 2006 and June 11 2021;
Those chances might be a lot more realistic than all this panning out.

I came across a quote:

“Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell.
Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”
― Vine Deloria Jr.

Jon was there.
I was there.
And the baby koala was there too.

Let’s see how we’re doing three years from now.
What’s left of me.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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