I knew I had to go to Hallelujah, the documentary about Leonard Cohen’s legendary song.
I knew I had-to, didn’t want-to…

It might seem quite obvious why someone who is into rock music would not get too excited about a movie about storyteller, and singer-songwriter (before the word existed) Leonard Cohen, but it was not that obvious to me because I love biopics and documentaries about musicians.

A few years ago I had enjoyed the Leonard Cohen documentary “Words of Love”, about his relationship with the Marianne from the song “So long Marianne”.
Maybe that was it; I had already seen the to me most interesting part, the love story that had lasted throughout their lives.
Marianne chose for a normal life, instead of being the on and off muse to a fickle troubadour, but the documentary proved love cannot be fooled.
The heart cannot be betrayed.

We can choose a good life, we can give our time, our love, our devotion, to a new partner who does not crush us, overwhelm us, does not overthrow us, as the word in the lyrics of Hallelujah say.
Overthrow also being the word Cohen uses to describe the austerity of the Zen monastery he will stay at for 5 years, “designed to overthrow you”.

We can turn away from those kinds of forces and do what is the right thing to do, in particular if children are involved. The price for Marianne’s life on the island of Hydra, was paid by the  son of Marianne and her first husband.
Together with all the other children of parents and families staying there.
They never got to grow up within the structured routines of a normal family life.

I think even more than out of her own need or necessity, Marianne chose a normal life to provide a better life for him.
She went back to Norway, with her son.
But his fate seems to have been determined by a trip to India with his father, Marianne’s ex-husband. A recently released documentary Little Axel, honors his story. 

Although Marianne remarried, and was happy with her new life, she and Leonard Cohen stayed in touch. It was no secret they were still very fond of each other.
A life can be adapted, but the heart chooses. Hers, had chosen.

Maybe because I believed the most important part of Leonard Cohen’s story, and the part I was interested most, had already been told in the previous documentary Words of Love, I didn’t feel like going to Hallelujah, which would only revolve around one song.
But I went, nonetheless.
Because it was unthinkable not to go.
I’m a rock star writer, and movies about music are the easiest, almost done-for-you stories to tell.
The work is already done by the maker of the film, all I have to do is to show up to watch it.

And I did, totally unprepared to be blown away by it.
Unprepared to be overthrown, by Hallelujah the documentary, like generations have been overthrown by the song.

Part of what resonated with me can be attributed to the song. To the universal principles of seeking meaning, of seeking God.
The story of a song that had a rough start of no one wanting it, then meandering for decades until a Disney movie (!), makes it so big it takes on a life of its own.

The lyrics of the version we have been hearing the past 20 years, no longer contain the original sexual references.
The Hallelujah that ultimately became the best known, most covered version is the Rufus Wainwright version of the official soundtrack album, with lyrics that were compiled by the Shrek producers.

No one expected Hallelujah to ever become this big, but now that it did, and we can see the painstaking, years-long, notebook-consuming process, it took Cohen to come to the song, crying out to God he could no longer do it because the work was just too hard, we can see it was well-deserved.
That Hallelujah was a song Cohen had to fight for, to be the one to bring it. To be the Chosen One, to sing this divine song.
A song Cohen would keep changing the lyrics from, moving out of the old testament into contemporary ones, but his lyrics always married sexuality with spirituality.

Writing Hallelujah was a process that took years, and even when we thought he had finished it, he had not finished it.
Cohen was still, writing.

To see an artist wrestle bringing forth his greatest work, I think that is what this movie is about. Not just to me, but for everybody.
But for me something far more practical and tangible came out of it.
Something hidden, in the story of how Cohen went from being a poet, to a  song-writer, to a singer, to a spiritual seeker.
He immersed himself in his relationship with God, just like he immersed himself in his relationship with women.
He lived it, he breathed it, he devoured it and it devoured him.
It overthrew him and he let himself be overthrown.

And then, he wrote.

Songs, lyrics, verses, versions. But also poems and prayers. For his 50th birthday he wrote Words of Mercy, with 50 prayers, which he offered to those in need of them but which he wrote, as he stresses, out of necessity.
Because at that time, it was the only way the words came out.

radio interview:
Leonard Cohen discusses ‘Book of Mercy’ on CKUA (1984)

And it was this necessity to write, the mixing of sexuality and spirituality, the knowing that the two are intertwined, that I recognized in myself.
And it was him defining himself as a storyteller, and letting the medium be in service of the story, that I needed to hear.
That I needed to hear, now that my own career, aged 50, needed to be restarted. And this time, I wanted to choose right.
I did not, ever again, wanted to be known for possessing a certain skill or craft and then be limited by the rules, regulations, business models and expectations tied to that skill or craft.

But it wasn’t until I saw Cohen’s struggle with God, with words, with telling the stories he knows are his to tell, and his surrender to using whatever medium was at hand;
That I understood what I had done wrong.

What I had done wrong, and had course corrected, but still-
not in the right way.
I had course corrected wrongly.
And this wrong course correct, had ultimately made me toss away something that despite 20+ years of being delusional about it, had been mine!
And that thing was yoga.
Yoga is my craft after all.

Just absolutely not the way I thought it was for 15 years and not the way I thought it was for the last 5 years, when I desperately tried to understand it.
Course corrected it.
Wrongly….

To be frank, I have tried to burn both my writing and as well as my yoga, the two mediums I am most skilled at.
And for years I failed. 

I wanted to burn writing because it was too unpredictable, cost too much time (a post like this easily costs 5 hours) and writing bore the hallmarks of a hobby.
My writing was like the 180 verses of Hallelujah;
To market it, there was too much and it was too messy. And yet there were still more verses for me to write.
My work as a writer is never done, there are always more thoughts to be had and more stories to tell. I often say that if they sold writer’s block in a bottle, I would pay for that.

And then there was yoga.
Oh…. yoga.
Although I still understand why I chose it, late 20th century, and I can still see the amazing things I, as a teacher, would have been able to do with it, my resentment to being a yoga teacher and in particular to being seen as a yoga teacher, and what my profession entailed- my resentment had become unbearable.
I was more than ready to burn yoga, ritually, if I had known how.

And last week, the big WHY dropped. I saw why it was important to burn the yoga teacher badge forever.
Because yoga would take my life, if I didn’t.
It would prevent me from doing the work I absolutely want to do, before I die. An urgency better and more eloquently expressed by a 70 year old Cohen.
There comes a moment when the net starts closing in, you know your timeline is ending, and you know it is now or never.

Everybody tries to talk me out of this fatalistic way of thinking but for me it is clear;
If I don’t choose right this time, my life is lost.

I will never finish my Hallelujah, and step into the role of being a modern-day writer whose task is vastly different from the book-writing author of the 20th century, as well as profoundly different from the commercial bloggers of the 21st- if I don’t cut ties with the yoga that cost me two decades.

I will never be the writer I know I am meant to be, if I keep dragging that old yoga teacher identity with me, like a cross.

Last week, it made me so happy to say goodbye to yoga.
I glowed as if I had found a new lover, God, or both!
And could not remember the last time I felt SO good.

But then I saw it…
And I did see it before the documentary, to be honest;
Glimpses.
When I saw that I had already done a lot of writing, creating books, guides, manuals, all in the field of yoga and that I absolutely wholeheartedly loved.
My book The White Tigress Yoga Workbook.
The free Bon Jovi yoga manual.
And the Dutch compilation, Love Duckie’s Yogabook, that I wrote in my child-like handwriting to make it extra cute. Well, it’s Love Duckie’s handwriting of course.

They were glimpses where I understood that in order for those and all the other yoga schedules on my computer and on paper, and for all my still-to-be-made yoga creations, and the books about the White Tigress lineage I still wanted to study so desperately and perhaps write a new one- that topic is my necessity to study, like Leonard Cohen’s 50 prayers of Words of Mercy were a necessity to write!-
that I needed to get back to yoga.

That somehow, despite yoga already having taken 20 years of my life which I could not get back, the only way to honor the work I had created, the yoga schedules in those three publications and all the schedules I create as abundantly and prolifically like Leonard Cohen created new verses to his Hallelujah-
that in order to save that work, I needed to get back to yoga.

But I also knew, that I could not be trapped again in the yoga teacher’s body. That I could not lose one more day, being confined in this role of being a yoga teacher. Not teaching like that in real life, nor in the way I had been on YouTube since 2015. 
Not to mention I had lost 2022 entirely, because I thought I would reboot my two YouTube channels with yoga, and then hardly creating anything for a whole year.
And wept, because 2022 had been the worst year of my life.
Totally lost.

I knew I could not, let that happen again.

So I was left to find a way to get back to yoga.
Back to the schedules I had made in twenty years time, schedules that had been my little works of art, my words of love or drawings of love (and of Love Duckie), and find a way to be with them, share them, teach them, which was as I now realized my work to do just like Leonard’s work was his poetry and his seeking, his writing.
But I had to find a way to do it without being a yoga teacher.

Fail, and my life will be in vain.
My life stands upon the edge of a knife and if I stray I will either lose yoga, and the work that was mine to do, or I will be devoured by being seen as a yoga teacher.
By this role, that constricted me so much, because I did not know I was a creator, a writer, and not a business owner or a professional.
To be seen as a yoga teacher was harmful, because I am an artist and I need to be free.

Stray.
A little.
And fail.

And then the documentary gave me the answer. Hallelujah provided both the context to understanding that yes! Yoga was indeed a medium that I should be using. Just like Leonard had poetry, song writing, prayer writing, singing and recording, and performing.
Yoga was a medium, like any other. But this was mine.

The mistake I course-corrected wrongly, the one I talked about a few paragraphs further up,  was I thought I had been drawn to yoga from a performer’s perspective.
That what I had wanted from yoga, was to use it as a performance tool. As a way to let my body express something.
That’s what I wrestled with these final years.
I knew that I had been drawn to yoga, when it was done by performers. Which had led me to believe, that it had been the performance element, that I had not found in the official trainings I took, and it was not part in the yoga I taught either. 
For years I had been convinced performance was the craft I wanted to develop, both with and within yoga.

But the Leonard Cohen documentary showed me, the key element to my art, is not performance.
It isn’t performance at all.
That I, like Leonard Cohen, am a storyteller.

What had appealed to me, when I saw a performer who did yoga, was that they told a story, with their body!
It had not been the performer thing, it had been the story-teller thing.
Their body had added meaning, urgency, and energy, to yoga.
Their body had given yoga, a story.

Exactly like my White Tigress workbook, my Bon Jovi yoga manual, and Love Duckie’s yoga book, had given yoga a story.

The reason I have felt so absolutely horrible, desperate and ultimately devastated and ready to burn all yoga, was that I could not tell my stories.
Sure, I created a little 5 minutes here and there to talk about it;
A themed class, a themed series.
But ultimately I knew those little creative outbursts were in service of yoga, because THAT was the role of a yoga teacher. To be in service of yoga, and in service of the people looking for yoga.

But my job is to be in service of the story.
And my yoga should be in service of the story.

I don’t want to teach yoga, create yoga, do yoga, that is the most effective, that is the best, or that is highest in demand.
All those years, from late 20th century with the performer Madonna expressing all kinds of Rock Star things with her muscular yoga body;
To the frustration I had when I felt that as a yoga teacher my job was to be silent when I wanted to scream and wake the world.
It all came down to one thing;
Story.

And the absolute necessity, the knowing, the urgency, the motherfucking CALLING, of knowing I am here to speak, and write, and share, and shake up.
And that yoga is part of how I express.

And it’s a very, very large part.

So I was right, last week, when I knew I would never be a yoga teacher ever again. I’m not a yoga teacher.
I’m a storyteller.

And my yoga has been going on for 25 years, and although it looks like I’m done, there is still so much work to do. 
It is so horribly and terribly, so terrifyingly incomplete, compared to the vastness of all the untold yoga stories, still inside of me.

It took until the movie, the Leonard Cohen documentary, to understand that yoga is not my profession.
Being a storyteller is.
And my first expression is writing.
My second is speaking.
And my third is yoga.

And together, they are my time-consuming, life-bringing, impossible, maddening, euphoric, Hallelujah.

Together, they are Grace.
.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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That was it! 

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This Rock Star Writer blog is an element of “Rock Star” [phase 3]

Unfortunately, this is not one of those posts that will only increase in value with time. Not a precious new addition that will be picked up by search engines and Google Android reader, months from now.
But fortunately, it is also not a post that has disturbing news such as “this site is changing”.
Because it is not changing!

My vision for this site is still the same as the day I changed this site from rockstaryoga to rockstarwriter, which was pre-pandemic if I’m not mistaken.

Which is to write music-inspired long reads, and the official series are to write posts about Bon Jovi’s box set (2004) and to write about Bon Jovi’s 1995 90 minute Wembley recording Live From London.
And I had decided that the Live from London series would also cover all the extra songs, available on a 3-ish hour bootleg version of that night in Wembley.
But I haven’t written for either one of those series for over a year now.

In 2022 I have only written a few longreads, about The Red Hot Chili Peppers in The Netherlands;
A playlist for Jon Bon Jovi’s 60th birthday;
And I wrote about three live performances I saw this year, Guns N Roses, and two local bands/artists.
And that’s it, that was 2022.

But this summer, I wrote many accidental long reads for a blog called #dailybonjoviyoga.
And just like this blog, which was renamed Rock Star Writer, pretty soon after having opened as Rock Star Yoga-
in the same manner #dailybonjoviyoga was redubbed #dailybonjovilive a few days ago.
Because I only wrote about live concerts, and hardly if ever about yoga.

So clearly, my biggest inspiration this year came from the live concerts. Attending them AND listening to them! 

I will start harvesting, cleaning up, and rewriting, all the relevant long-read blog posts I wrote for that other blog, and repost them here.
So that we can close 2022 here on the Rock Star Writer blog, with a strong list of new additions.

But listening to concerts is taking a toll on my mental health, because I think I burned some innerfuse this summer! 

I hear snippets of Bon Jovi music in my head all day, and when I go to bed at night it’s even worse. As if three radios are playing simultaneously.
My brain is no longer able to make sense of everything I have been listening to.
It mixes Bon Jovi with whatever movie I saw last, or series I watched.
And when I close my eyes, I see moving images that belong in sci-fi movies.

It’s like a mental filter, that should have been there, is no longer there. Since this summer, I’m in a constant state of overstimulation.
So I just gave up on going to a concert from Bon Jovi tribute Bounce, a show I was going to attend in November, in Germany.
And I had been counting the days to go, since last August! 

—-
So ARE YOU ready to rock?!
Then make your final months of 2022 memorable!
Bon Jovi tribute band Bounce is touring Germany: 
https://www.bonjovitribute.de/termine.php
An amazing experience.

YouTube playlist here: Tribute band Bounce (est. 2001) + singer Oliver Henrich 
—-

For me personally, attending was no longer an option. I would have woken up sick the next day. And two train rides and hours away from home, just like I had woken up after Guns N’ Roses. Barely able to move, and more in need of Paracetamol than breakfast.

So no live music for me, for now…. I really want to sort myself out, sooner rather than later because a Rock Star Writer that can’t attend rock concerts, is at the stage of not being able to do her work. So let’s hope this is temporary and that I m back on the road soon.

Until then I will be taking it the slowest of slow, these final months of 2022. There will be more than one silent night.

Silent Night is a Bon Jovi track from the second Bon Jovi album, 7800 Fahrenheit (1985). An album that was lost in history.
Silent Night was one of the songs from that second album, which was added to the setlist, for the 1985 tour. It had a special part to play, because it was the only ballad of Bon Jovi’s first and second album.

Silent Night stayed on the setlist until the beginning of 1987. By then Slippery When Wet, the band’s third album, had effectively shot them to super stardom and the band was dropping more and more songs of their older work.
Early 1987 it was Silent Night’s turn to make way.

They replaced it with a song that is a fan favorite, to this day. If it had not been for “Wanted Dead or Alive” getting all the attention, this other ballad  from Slippery When Wet would have been better remembered.
Its message still resonates today.

Never Say Goodbye.
.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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Never Say Goodbye 6 February 1990 Santiago, Chile

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

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Books

I think this is something I should have told you a long time ago. But I chose to save it for when after a six week hiatus – six weeks where I damn well knew what I wanted to do here, it wasn’t that I didn’t know where to start – I finally write a post again.
Figuring that since I still not feel like writing a Bon Jovi inspired post, nor creating a Bon Jovi inspired video, and every day there is new drama to be dealt with;
I need to change the game.

Because every day there has either been recovering, decompressing from events or simply a way too busy social calendar;
Or it was marked by new mayhem, or adventures coming my way.

In the last 48 hours I ended up in the dentist chair after a family dinner and set my kitchen on fire after trying to clarify butter for the first time in 5 years and forgetting it was on the stove. It was a saucepan with boiling black oil when I discovered it.
And that was after recovering from post-vaccination rage.

Other events were several digital shitstorms and threatening situations, two days of migraine, and Covid related mayhem that ultimately turned out to be absolutely harmless.
If you had spoken to me in these first 12 days of the new year, it would have been hard to tell the difference between me and that dark witch from Harry Potter played by Helena Bonham Carter.
Lestrange.
Bella Lestrange I think it is.

So yeah, things were bad. And since I have chosen my main topic to be Bon Jovi, I think that comes with a set of responsibilities!
One of them being you don’t show up when you’re capable of taking Harry Potter’s head off.

So unless I feel Bon Jovi – worthy, I stay away.

This is how I ultimately described it a few days ago:

But what I m pretty sure I have brushed on just lightly, making it seem unimportant, is that the essence of me, the me-at-my-core, is not a Bon Jovi fan but a Guns N Roses fan.

The positive-life-lessons, inspiring-words me, is someone I only see when the sun shines and everything goes smooth;
Dirty, nasty, sexy, antagonist me however?
Much higher chance of running into daily!

So if I want to make this blog Rock Star Writer work, if I want to start doing daily Bon Jovi yoga AND writing for the blog named after it;
If I want to make my two English YouTube channels work, and if I want to start showing up for my Dutch yoga channel again (which I do)?
Then I need to start including that side of me.

Because if I keep it a sunny day’s drive only;
2022 is not going to be, like the tweet says, what we all need it to be.

So I m gonna need you to buckle up, so I can show myself to you.
In all my random messiness, anger, and evilness.

Not because I want to, not because I think it would not be more preferable to be a little less out there, and at least take some of the edges off.

But because I’ve tried that, and we’re now at the point where it’s leading to 6 week hiatuses.

So next time I look or feel like that 80s picture of Guns N Roses, that I included in this post; Like a half naked, wasted, rock star without a sense of which way is up, and I probably just set fire to my kitchen?
Then I will no longer go missing in action.

I ll show up.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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at 14:55 Bremen, Holland and at 15:25 playing in Holland

Close to every night, close to every morning – and this condition is a progressive one, which started at the beginning of the pandemic –
I wake up thinking that I don’t know by what, or why;
But that I m done for.

That there is no way in hell my sleep-deprived, feverish body (don’t panic; I never have a fever, it’s often even on the brink of being too low) with the numb feeling of a threatening cold, ever since this goddamn pandemic began, is going to make it through the day.

That I will have to get Covid tested and quarantined, or will soon be too sick to move and better cancel my appointments for the upcoming week since I ll soon be taken out, for anything between two days of migraine or two weeks of being sick.

And yet? I get out of bed anyway.
I more often than not miss out on the first few hours, because I had so little sleep I want to at least try and get  it up to 5 a night… Even if it has to be in the morning.
And sometimes I can catch a few extra hours before I get up, and sometimes not.
Sometimes I stay in bed playing with my phone, and sometimes I get up at 6.30

But regardless what I choose or reluctantly settle for?
By the time it’s 9, 10 o’clock, I m fully healed!
And the whole morning drama is absolutely nothing more than a bad memory, and I can’t believe I fell for it once again.

This silly roller coaster causes that within 24 hours I make the resolution, to share this deplorable condition here, just to get it over with; So that I can then accept it, and move on.

So what, that I apparently have to get my shit done every day in 4 hours less than I used to have?
That’s still pretty good! 

But once, just once; Clear the sheet and put it on this blog…. Get it out. 
Or so I think.

Only to then of course, think a few hours later how absolutely ridiculous that was.
I mean, write about what, right?
I m fine!
More than fine, because my life is coming together for me in such a massively satisfying way. It’s as if everything from my entire life, is falling together like Tetris boxes, and I don’t even have to do anything.
It happens entirely naturally.

So I know that within weeks, this work here too, and my YouTube, and my Dutch yoga, will be rocking like it never rocked before.
I ve also started on a book, and intend to publish one every year.
The first one will be ready within weeks.

Yet still, even after all this Tetris box dropping started behind the scenes;
Almost every morning, I think life has caught up with me, and I m going down.

Until this week, when I started listening to a new upload on the hAnD90 channel:
A remastered audio recording of the first concert night of Bon Jovi in Bremen 1995.
I listened to the recording on repeat for days on end, and it was so energizing I got tons of work done, that generously compensated for any hours I had missed in the morning.

But there was something else; Something that struck a chord, and that illustrated exactly how I had been feeling.
The right vocabulary to use, if I chose to write about it anyway.

Jon Bon Jovi thinks he’s in Bremen, Holland.

Now for those who are not native to Germany or The Netherlands (Holland);
There is no Bremen, Holland.
Bremen is in Germany, where Bon Jovi played 26 and 27 May 1995.
In Holland we have Nijmegen, where Bon Jovi would play on the 28th of May, so immediately after.
After which the band would play 5 more shows in Germany again;
then a couple of other European countries, and then later on in the European leg one more German concert and another Dutch concert, in Rotterdam.

I m not trying to rationalize anything, but 1995 did have a  confusing tour schedule.

So anyway, first night in Bremen it did bite them in the ass, and Jon Bon Jovi made the classic mistake of the lead singer greeting the wrong city or country. 
Or in this case; Correct city, wrong country.

And I thought: “That’s the closest to describing how I feel.”

That feeling of touring, being jet-lagged, moved around the continent, and not knowing where you are or how you’re going to get through?
Since the pandemic I ve been falling prey to that.
And what started as an eerie “I am legend”/ Groundhog day feeling in March 2020;
Has progressed to feeling very sick every morning, and not knowing which way is up.

I feel strong now, as I type this.
And when you start seeing me on YouTube (business channel, Dutch yoga coming, English #dailybonjoviyoga coming) I will feel strong too.
Do not expect me to complain, ever, ever again, I will not allow myself to wallow here.

But just once, I need to say it;

Since Covid, I wake up every day;
In Bremen, Holland.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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the perfect rebuilding playlist: Bon Jovi 2020 New Songs + Original Pre Covid album

“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
― Marilyn Monroe

If I think about the roller coaster from last Wednesday until Tuesday morning (yesterday morning)?
I understand perfectly why ever since then I m walking on clouds!

Why sometimes, not only do things fall apart so better things can fall together, as Marilyn Monroe put it.
But the falling apart also makes the falling together extra sweet.

Even when, as is the case for me, things are nowhere near where I want them to be.
Yet especially taking those last punches, that last day of;
Having nowhere to go with your sick cat, because of practicalities.
The politics around a very painful situation with people you respect yet have to leave.
Having an unprecedented migraine and being on your knees vomiting at 4 AM, in the final hours of what were your 6 days of roller coaster riding.

And you then wake up and the clouds have disappeared! 
Nothing beats that feeling.

At first I was still like; “Is this real?”
And I went about my day as if I was tiptoeing! 
But yeah… it’s over. I m cool.
And the cat is okay. I still have to get him medical attention but he’s stable as long as I give him salmon every three hours (and not chicken).

A recurring more pesky aspect that is causing me to bottom out frequently in 2020 and 2021 is my social anxiety when I have real life interactions. If I have an indoor group activity, could be as simple as going to the movies or going to the hairdresser even, I get a crossover between a jetlag, hangover and an anxiety attack.
Afterwards, not during.

Same with my sex life: 
Usually punished with days of feeling extremely unstable.

Both the cats and me have a long way to go until we are back on our paws, and it will be baby steps when possible but more often it will just be sucking it up! 
I suspect the road to recovery and that place where it’s all still crashing down, will be surprisingly close-knit. 

What helped me through for the most part was realizing that it’s not about what I can or cannot do today, but about what I want to be able to do tomorrow.
Travel.
Be in big groups.
Be free to choose my love life the way I want to.

If I can see something is not sustainable, not healthy, or is even contradictory to what I know is my future, I have to solve it, change it, or in a rare case let it go.

And sometimes… sometimes it’s not about nursing cats back to excellent health;
Not about training yourself back into crushing it out there in the real world;
Not about letting go of something or someone you knew was ultimately not a good fit.

But someone you hoped would be there with you, occasionally, frequently, a surprise guest;
You looked forward to continuing what you had or for them to be there with you. 
Letting them go are the ones that hurt the most.

And it can be unexpected. That you didn’t know you cared that much.

You didn’t know until you found yourself on your knees at 4 AM in the morning, throwing up. 

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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When I found the photos of my bedroom from when I was 16 years old, I was already, or still, shaky from realizing how little I had known about myself.
And how it had lead me to living the wrong *include heavy swearing* life.
When I think of how I am going to make up for decades, I catch myself thinking somewhere along the lines of:
“Louise Hay and Anais Nin were both over 40 before becoming successful.”
Or even:
“Nelson Mandela made something out of his life, when he came out of prison.”

After having screwed up the first half of my life;
I know I will not allow the second half to go to waste.
No way.

Yet, it still boggled me!
How had it even been possible to SLEEP THROUGH two decades of working in yoga, an industry based on enlightenment, consciousness, mindfulness?
Out of ALL the industries, how had I managed to not notice how much of a misfit, how much not-me ness, how much stuff that DIRECTLY conflicted with my values, had been part of yoga?
When I had all the overeating, all the non-practicing, all the not being interested in whatever the flying fuck was going on in my industry, to prove it.
“HOW?!” I ask of thee.

Especially because for the first 30 years of my life;
I DID NOT make mistakes like that!
I came out ready and able, and knowing who I was. And my life was in full alignment of that.

If I had just kept on going, I would not just have rocked at life;
I would have been a beacon of inspiration and entertainment.
And not a swearing like a sailor, middle-aged woman, who can’t believe she let life slip through her fingers for such a vast period of time.

30! I was THIRTY when I took the wrong turn!
Well, almost. I was 29.
Not an age where anyone thinks:
“Oh, we better watch Suzanne. This is a critical age!”
And it was also not an age where I myself was like:
“Oh, going on 30! Better watch out, because here’s where many have failed before me!”
* frowns eyes and stares intensely and unforeseen future*

Nobody watches out at 30.
And neither did I.
Although, although! That is not true!  
I had for years escaped having an office job, and when I caved and gave up on my independence, doing yoga was my escapism.

But then I started getting trained as a yoga teacher, and became that. I thought I had escaped the office job and that teaching yoga would bring me something a normal job didn’t.
Only to then wake up 20 years later.

Maybe that is the cruelty of it all;
You think you escape the monster of mundane office life, only to end up with another job that wasn’t right. 

And yet, before we talk Jon Bon Jovi posters, because I will get to that as well, I have always known for a fact that there was nothing wrong with yoga;
Contrary to something (in my opinion) inherently being wrong with office life.
So I can understand why I thought yoga would be good for me, or an improvement of sorts, because yoga is good.

There really is nothing wrong with yoga practitioners, and being a yoga teacher was and is a noble profession.
Which is why it took me so many years to realize that I ve wasted 20 years of my life. Finding photos from 1988 made the message extra raw and unpalatable;
It had been all there.

My 1988 bed proves I knew exactly who I was, and that I would rather die than cave. I would back myself up, do or die, my way or the highway.
Until…. 

The two photos with all the posters from Jon Bon Jovi, are of my bedroom in the attic.
They are taken in February, this is about a good year after Bon Jovi became famous in the Netherlands.
So it’s not that long.
Yet from the number of posters, and the way they are arranged, you can see I have been collecting and even curating them. The posters I selected for this location, are assorted by size.
One poster is double, it’s in the six piece above my head. But because the posters are hung up in a way that is pleasing to the eye, this does not matter.
It’s the perfect mosaic.

A few months later, I took the posters down.
I had started dating, and although I would remain an avid fan, I thought my bedroom should be more neutral. Or adult. Serious.
I know these things, both staying an avid fan and taking the posters down, because I have another photo where the posters are gone.
And I went to the Bon Jovi concert late that year.

My love for Jon Bon Jovi or Bon Jovi, had not changed.
It was purely because I thought that dating involved only showing the pleasant, the datable, love-worthy, side of yourself.

And that the wild, boy-crazy, bathing myself in paper-testosterone version of me, would not be welcomed.

In retrospect, the moment I took those posters down, was the moment I started presenting myself as something I am not.

In the other photo, one I took at a later date, I still have an unmade bed.
But there are no posters.
There is no book.
The photo is uninteresting. I didn’t even bother to scan it.
It’s taken by daylight,  the white wall looks even whiter. The unmade bed looks cold and empty.

It’s a proper photo, the daylight one without any Jon Bon Jovi posters hanging on the walls.
The lighting is good, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Nothing.
Except of course the absence of all the liveliness, the realness, and the authenticity that was captured in the two grainy black and white pictures of a girl’s bed with Jon Bon Jovi covered walls.

I gained boyfriends, I gained a sex life. I gained being adult and grownup.

But at the cost of a wall of Jon Bon Jovi posters.

And the highest price of all;
At the cost of being me.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

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