You Don’t Need to Prove Your Trauma

I found a very old CD I thought was long gone. This is what I learned from it.

Huge news: my friend Jess found the CD Ben Stevens and I recorded in the year 2004! Until this week, I thought it belonged to one of multiple Rubbermaid bin sacrifices that carved my adult self into being, lost to time. BUT JESS, ONCE AGAIN, HAS COME THROUGH.

Young Sophie, left; Young Jess, right. WE LOVED BEN FOLDS FIVE.

(Weirdly, it’s time for a content warning here: I’m going to mention self-harm, suicide, and a few other similarly dark things in this post. No graphic details, but if the mention of these things is too much for you, skip this one! I will be throwing some of these words around a bit Willy nilly.)

You are falling all over yourself with questions about my album and my band; I get it. I’ll try to answer them.

I really did look for a photo of Ben and Sophie playing music together, but I couldn’t find it. I found instead this proof that in high school we were really cool dressers.

Q: What was the name of your band?

A: The Esplanades, pronounced Ess-plah-NODs, named after the East Bank Willamette River walkway that Ben and I thought had to be the most beautiful, romantic place on Earth. It was truly just a well-paved cement pathway that was on the other side of the river from the side we lived on, but when…