Susan Compton

THE LONG WAY HOME

I spent the vast majority of my life feeling worthless and repulsive and wrong in this world. 

These things were so fundamental that I didn’t even think about them ... They felt every bit as true and unquestioned and far from my consciousness as gravity.

I just don’t get to have what I dream of.

I just don’t get to be loved.

Other people get to have those things, but I don’t.

I will always be on the outside.

These things felt like the truth of the universe.

Then in three singular moments, everything changed.

First, I decided to embrace every single thing my heart loves.

The things I love had been criticized and dismissed and ignored by the people who mattered in my young life, so I learned to believe that what I loved was silly and stupid and wrong. 

I learned to criticize and dismiss and ignore the things I love just as those voices had, thereby criticizing and dismissing and ignoring my own heart from the inside out.

This is where I learned that I was worthless and nothing.

The second moment was embracing my love for something I had long criticized as silly, a soap star I had somehow been drawn to from the moment he showed up on my radar more than 15 years earlier. 

Whenever he crossed my path, he had a presence I could physically feel. I remember wanting to see various movies he was in just because he was in them, though I actually never did, nor did I ever even look him up. 

He just sort of stopped me in my tracks whenever he would appear, most powerfully in a storyline I looked up about a decade ago, where he was a healing presence in the life of a young girl who had been raped.

I was stunned as I watched that story unfold, seeing him embody a kindness and presence and love my mother had very specifically taught me did not exist from men.

I could feel this healing presence through the screen, wondering if there was the tiniest possibility that my mother had been wrong.

But it was just a story. 

Along with teaching me that such things didn’t exist, she was also sure to include that I might see it in TV or movies, but that it was a lie.

My mother had systematically torn down any possibility of my belief in love and kindness.

Then in an unimaginable twist of fate - the kind of thing that is now absolutely the rule in my life, not the exception - that soap star moved to my town.

Thanks to his face appearing on the Opry sign and the most life-altering Google search in history, I landed in the world of his band and their music, which to my complete shock is filled with the healing language of kindness and presence and love.

That same presence I could feel through the screen was now coming through my headphones ... In his own real life words from his own real life heart. 

“You’re so young, and you already need so much healing.“

From the depth of my wounds from my mother, I had no idea it was possible for a man to even think such things, much less write them up for public consumption.

Those words changed everything.

Over the next weeks and months and years, I actually got to know both that soap star and his brother, who are two of the most precious gifts ever to grace my path. For all I’ve told them over the years - and one of them likely loaded these very words onto the page where you’re reading them - I think they still have no idea the depth of healing they have truly brought to my life and heart.

The third moment came about a year later, made possible by the foundation of love and kindness laid by Jonathan and Richard Lee Jackson and the music of ENATION.

I had landed an absolutely phenomenal church gig, singing with the most incredible songwriters and musicians in Nashville.

The Sunday before Christmas of 2013, a singer/songwriter named Matthew Perryman Jones showed up to sing.

His voice was the most exquisite sound I had ever heard.

To this day it remains not only my favorite voice, but my favorite sound in the universe.

As he sang Emmylou Harris’ powerful words about walking through darkness, something in me broke completely open.

I wept from the depths of the earth through his entire performance.

I came to know his phenomenal catalog of music over the next months, finding its language to be the key to every locked door in me.

I had never encountered such a deeply healing and illuminating presence of any kind ever in my lifetime.

His words and music created the space where all of my healing work has been done.

I began writing my journey completely by accident, when one of his lines sparked the discovery that I believed my love was horrifying to people.

I had spent my life trying not to love people, because I thought my love was something they would find repulsive and terrifying.

I believed my love was a curse to people.

Over these past four years, I’ve been writing every moment of my healing journey, unraveling the lies that built walls between me and my heart. 

Whispering truth to those vicious lies, and tearing down those walls brick by brick.

Countless dreams have unfolded since that moment I simply began embracing what I love.

I made a record with the most incredible musicians in Nashville.

My endless words have found their way to family and friends and acquaintances and complete strangers all around the world, who send me stunningly beautiful messages about their own stories.

The man whose voice is my favorite sound in the universe and whose heart stands before me as a mirror in which I can see the beauty of my own, invited me onstage to sing with him in his show.

I got to sing with another artist, a song I had dreamed for years of singing with him ... Having no idea it was even happening until I heard the opening chords begin.

I got to do a photo shoot with an incredible celebrity photographer and artist and humanitarian, who shared my portrait and story with his ridiculous numbers of social media followers.

My portrait is currently among those featured on his website, in his portfolio that also includes the likes of President Obama and Sting and the Pope.

You cannot imagine the healing power that holds for my shattered heart that always believed I was repulsive.

I got to sing a song that so deeply resonates with my heart that it was on endless repeat for two weeks, with its artist who blew in from playing the Opry the night before just to sing it with me.

Since I’ve begun intentionally connecting with people I admire using whatever avenues I have at my disposal, I have been honored to meet or spend time with all manner of authors and healers and creators who are making this world a better place. 

As I have connected with and sought out the kinds of people I want in my life, they have begun appearing out of nowhere ... Randomly showing up in my midst from across town and across the country.

There truly is infinite creative power in simply embracing what we love and want.