More than a Melody

I used to think love was supposed to fix me.

Like if I was beautiful enough, loyal enough, quiet enough, wild enough... something enough... he would stay. He would choose me. And maybe, I would finally feel like I belonged to someone who saw the whole me and didn’t flinch.

But I didn’t grow up watching love hold steady. I watched it leave, crumble, lie, drink too much, and disappear when I needed it most. My daddy taught me the language of absence, and I learned to speak it fluently. So when a man ghosted me, raised his voice, or loved me on Monday and forgot me on Friday; I didn’t run. I folded myself smaller, quieter. I stayed.

 

Because broken felt like home.

Over the years, I poured my soul into men who couldn’t hold water. I traded pieces of myself like tokens at a fair, just hopin’ someone would hand me back a prize. But baby, the prize I was lookin’ for wasn’t in them; it was buried inside of me all along.

I chased love like it was salvation.

 

But the truth? Love don’t save you. God does.

Love is supposed to meet you where you are, not leave you stranded at a gas station in the middle of your healing journey.

Still, I tried.

I tried loving through silence. I tried loving through anger. I tried loving through ghosted texts and hot-and-cold affections. I made excuses for men who wouldn’t even make plans. And I told myself, this is love, because I didn’t know any better.

But now I do.

Now, I understand that peace feels better than butterflies. That silence with the wrong man is louder than a crowded room. And that God will let you sit in the stillness not to punish you... but to protect you from what you think you want.

This chapter isn’t about all the men who left.

It’s about the woman who stayed with herself.

 

It’s about me; Nicole. The one who cried on her bathroom floor, wiped her own tears, and still got up the next morning to pour life into others. The one who loved when it wasn’t returned. The one who forgave when it wasn’t earned. The one who found Jesus in the wreckage of her romantic dreams and realized that was the real love story all along. 

And when the right man comes... if he ever does... he won’t meet a broken woman beggin’ for love. He’ll meet a woman who already knows she’s whole.

Before the lights, before the stages, before the name Sassey was whispered through speakers across the country, there was a boy named Devon.

Devon was soft in all the ways the world wasn’t. He looked at me like I was something sacred, something he wanted to protect, not possess. I was just a girl then, wide-eyed and wild-hearted, still figuring out where to put all the love inside me. And he… he was patient. Sweet. The kind of boy who called when he said he would and meant it when he said he liked me.

He was the first to really see me, and the first to touch me in a way that wasn’t just physical. I lost my virginity to him, but more than that, I lost the illusion that love alone could make you ready.

Life was speeding up. Boys started noticing me. Grown men, too. And something about that attention lit a fire under my insecurities. I didn’t know how to handle something as gentle as Devon. So I ran toward the noise. The clout. The chaos.

I didn’t know what a real relationship was supposed to feel like, so I played games instead. I left something good because I didn’t yet know how to be good to it. We broke up when the world started calling my name louder than he did.

And then came the whirlwind... 2000.

I had a record deal, a hit song on the radio, and an ego floating somewhere above the clouds. From the outside, it looked like I had it all. But on the inside, something was missing. There was a hollow ache I couldn’t name. And when you’re broken, fame doesn’t heal you. It just gives you a bigger stage to perform your pain.

That’s when Shane stepped in.

 

He owned the pager shop where everybody in the neighborhood pulled up like it was the mall. Music pumping, phones chirping, energy buzzing. He was older, polished, smooth-talking, and business-minded. He saw potential in me, and I saw a lifeline in him.

It started innocent enough. He let me work the counter, introduced me to producers, promised to get me in the studio. But it didn’t stay innocent for long.

By 18, I was living in my first apartment, thanks to him, and spending weekends in hotel rooms or the backseat of his truck, trading my body for a sense of worth I hadn’t yet found in myself. I told myself this was love. Or success. Or something close enough to both.

We made magic in the booth. “Kiss You” ft. Ghetto Romeo shot up the charts, a number one song in 28 cities. People knew my name. My voice was everywhere. Sassey was everywhere.

But Nicole? She was disappearing.

That same year, I had an abortion. His baby. A decision I made alone while realizing I wasn’t the only woman in his life. He had a whole family. Kids. A longtime partner. And I was just… the girl in the backseat.

 

I didn’t just lose a child, I lost the last piece of innocence I’d been holding onto.

When I told Shane I was pregnant the first time, he didn’t flinch. No questions, no comfort, just calm. “Let’s go to breakfast tomorrow,” he said. Saturday morning, 8 a.m. sharp.

And just like that, I thought maybe this was the beginning.

A family. A new chapter. A we.

He picked me up, all smiles and cologne, like it was just another day. We headed downtown Portland. I remember watching the city roll past the window like it was a movie I couldn’t pause.

We parked beside a tall glass building that scraped the sky. Took an elevator to the tenth floor. I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t want to seem difficult. Young. Naïve. That was my whole personality back then.

"We just gotta do something real quick,” he said.

I nodded, like I always did.

We approached a door with a buzzer. He pressed it.

“Do you have an appointment?” the voice asked.

“Yes.”

Click. The lock released.

Inside, it looked like a normal doctor’s office; clean, white, quiet. He told the receptionist, “This is Nicole. She’s here for her appointment.”

She searched the computer, nodded, then handed me a clipboard. I signed my name on documents I didn’t read because I trusted the hand that gave them to me. He kissed me on the cheek, told me he’d be back after my appointment, and walked out.

I still thought he was doing something sweet. Maybe he scheduled me with a new OB. Maybe this was him stepping up.

Then the doctor called my name.

The room was sterile, cool. I sat in a chair that didn’t belong to me. The doctor started explaining the procedure.

“You’re scheduled today for a termination.”

Termination?

My heart stalled in my chest.

It took a second. A breath. A blink.

And then I realized, I wasn’t there to talk about options. I wasn’t there for care. I was already on the schedule.

He had booked the abortion.

Without ever asking me.

Without ever letting me decide.

I had walked willingly into a decision that wasn’t mine.

And I stayed quiet. I stayed small. I let it happen because I thought this is what love looked like. Sacrificing your voice so he could keep his life neat and untangled.

I didn’t even cry until days later. Because when your soul is silenced, your tears get lost on the way 

 

I didn’t cry loudly.

Just enough for the tears to find the corners of my jaw. Silent rivers... 

the kind that run when nobody’s supposed to know you’re drowning.

The doctor asked questions that felt like math problems in a language I never learned.

Had I ever done this before?

Any medical conditions?

All I could think was: I barely know how to file taxes, and you want me to answer for my uterus?

Ihad just moved out of my mama’s house, barely knew how to pick my own toothpaste, let alone make a life-altering medical decision. She wasn’t there. She didn’t know. About Shane. About the baby. About me folding into someone else’s plan because I didn’t know how to unfold into my own.

I nodded “yes” to questions I didn’t understand.

Then came the gown.

Thin. Blue. Disposable. Like me, I guess.

They walked me back to a room that looked like a dental office. The kind of place where people leave with brighter smiles. I was leaving with something much dimmer.

They placed the cone over my nose, laughing gas.

How ironic.

“Let’s see if the gas is working,” the doctor said.

“Why did 6 hate 7? Because 7, 8, 9.”

And I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

But because I didn’t know what else to do.

I laughed like it was gonna save me.

I laughed until the world turned gray.

 

Next thing I knew, it was over.

No heartbeat.

No choice.

No Shane.

Just me waking up in a room filled with sunlight and silence,

overlooking the city that raised me but never prepared me.

I stared out at Portland like it might understand, like the trees and bridges might somehow carry the weight of this secret with me.

 

But secrets this heavy don’t float.

And I knew, right then,

this would be the one I’d bury so deep, I’d forget where I planted it.

 

And no one, no one, would know.

 

The cab ride home felt longer than any tour I’d ever done.

I stared out the window like the city might give me something; 

comfort, closure, a sign.

But all I got was exhaustion wrapped in nausea.

The kind that lives in your bones and makes silence feel like screaming.

 

When I unlocked my door, I was hit with the scent of flowers... 

dozens of roses sitting on my kitchen counter like an apology could bloom.

The card read “I’m sorry.”

Sorry for what, Shane?

For picking me up like a prize and dropping me like a secret?

For booking appointments in my name without asking my soul first?

For using love like it was a tool to manipulate, not heal?

 

The flowers were beautiful, sure.

But all I saw were thorns.

I stayed in bed that whole weekend,

unplugging my phone like maybe if I stopped the world,

I could stop feeling too.

 

By Monday, I was upright.

Mascara on. Hoodie up.

Back to the music shop like none of it had happened.

Just a girl with a mic, trying not to cry in the lyrics.

 

I avoided Shane like he was a flame and I was already ash.

He tried to make small talk. I gave him smaller silence.

And then she walked in.

 

Tina.

His real woman. His public woman. The one he held hands with on the Vegas strip.

The one who didn’t need secrecy to exist.

 

And in front of everybody... 

in front of keyboards, speakers, and a shelf full of blank CD-Rs,

she grabbed Shane’s arm and announced it like it was a platinum record:

 

“Guess what guys!? I’m pregnant. We’re having another baby!!!”

The room froze.

Time froze.

But my insides did not.

 

I felt my knees weaken like they were made of regret.

My stomach dropped in a way no instrument could tune.

And all I could think was; me too, Tina…

me too.

 

But I had been erased.

Rewritten.

And left out of the credits.

I was the ghost in this story.

The girl in the shadows.

The voice on the track no one wanted to credit.

But even in all that mess, I learned. I learned how easy it is to mistake attention for affection. I learned how dangerous it is to let someone else define your value. And I learned that just because something looks like love doesn’t mean it is. 

If love was a drug, Shane was my supplier.

 

And I was strung out, hooked on his promises, his presence, and the power he had to make me feel like somebody. At just 19, I wasn’t equipped to handle a grown man’s game.

And that’s what it was; game.

One I thought I was winning… until I realized I was just the hidden level no one was supposed to know about.

 

His girlfriend, Tina, started showing up more often. At first it was random. Then it was every day. She wasn’t just his “baby mama.” She was the woman who knew his schedule, had keys to his store, and could silence a room just by walking in. They weren’t just “complicated.” They were a family.

And me? I was the other woman. The side chick. The back-alley secret in designer heels and lip gloss.

It got messier when he hired her; yes, hired her, to be my makeup artist. Imagine sitting in a chair while the woman your man sleeps next to is contouring your cheekbones. Can you even? I had to stare at my reflection and pretend I wasn’t dying inside, watching her smile at him, kiss him on the cheek, laugh like they didn’t have decades together. I wanted to scream, He was just at my apartment last night, whistling outside my window like a damn lovebird!

But I stayed silent. Because if I said the truth out loud, I might lose everything I thought I had... my apartment, my career, my access to the dream I’d waited for.

So I played my role.

We toured from Kansas to Cali, Washington to Vegas. Performing. Smiling. Singing for packed rooms and empty hearts. I was opening for legends like Alicia Keys, but behind the mic, I was crumbling. I watched Shane be her man in the daylight, and mine after dark. One moment, he’s holding her hand down the Vegas strip. The next, he’s in my hotel bed, whispering apologies and promises that always expired by morning.

And me? I was exhausted. My soul was bruised. My heart? Unrecognizable.

As the shows got bigger, my mind got smaller. I was losing myself in the spotlight.

Until the night everything snapped.

We were back from a show, and I guess my pain finally overflowed. I broke. Full-on collapse. No tears left, just numb. Shane drove me to the hospital; but instead of support, he made a call ahead, telling them I was a danger to myself.

When I heard my name called in the waiting room, I thought I was checking in. But he had already written the narrative.

We got to triage. The nurse asked, “Are you going to hurt yourself?” I said no. But the look on their faces told me it didn’t matter.

I ran. Straight out the front doors, adrenaline taking over. I didn’t get far before I collapsed on the sidewalk. Shane screamed behind me, “She’s gonna do it! She’s gonna hurt herself!” EMTs rushed in like a movie scene. And when I came to, I was strapped to a gurney, my ponytail holder gone, my shoes missing, locked in a room with windows you couldn’t open.

I called my brother.

Because in that moment, I realized: I was alone. With no one to protect me from the man who had just saved me and betrayed me in the same breath.

I sat on that hospital bed with my knees pulled up to my chest, looking around that cold room with the padded walls and the too-bright lights. My shoes were gone. My hair tie was gone. But the real theft? It was my voice. My power. My understanding of what love was supposed to feel like.

I wasn’t suicidal. I was tired.

Tired of pretending. Tired of the lies. Tired of seeing him with her while he swore I was the one. Tired of sacrificing my sanity for a man who only loved me in shadows.

And still, I couldn’t shake him. Even after that hospital trip. Even after they labeled me, monitored me, gave me pamphlets I wouldn’t read. I should’ve cut him off right then. But trauma bonds are strong… especially when you think chaos is love.

So, we kept going.

More shows. More hotel rooms. More secrets.

The song exploded.

Like fireworks across a sky I used to stare at from my bedroom window, praying for a life bigger than the one I knew. My voice, my voice, was all over the airwaves, floating through car stereos and bedroom speakers. Number one on Slow Jams and Dedications on 95.5... my city’s biggest station. At night, I’d turn the dial just to hear people calling in, dedicating my song to the ones they loved.

They didn’t even know the pain behind the lyrics. They just knew it felt like something they’d lived through, too.

My dream had come true. Interviews. News segments. Appearances. My name was finally in places I never thought it would reach. Me... the girl who once cried herself to sleep just wanting to be seen... was now being seen everywhere.

One of my favorite memories happened during a time I was secretly drowning. I was at the music shop, barely hanging on through a dark cloud of depression, when we released our version of the full album. The night before, I’d tipped off a radio host that it was dropping, and the next day, people poured in.

They’d walk up to the counter and ask, “Do you guys have The Sassey Project?”

And I’d smile. “Yeah. I think I can help you with that.”

It took them a minute to recognize me, the girl behind the counter was the same voice they’d been singing along to in their cars. And when it hit them? Their faces lit up like they just met Beyoncé in a corner store. Those reactions carried me through some of my hardest days. In those moments, I didn’t feel broken. I didn’t feel small. I felt like the version of me I used to dream about being.

We went out of town to perform, and every city felt like a movie. One time, Romeo and I were booked at a high school football game in Kansas City. The crowd went wild, these kids were jumping, screaming, living for the moment we hit the stage. After the show, some even followed us to Popeyes just to get autographs.

That’s the kind of story you tell your grandkids. That’s the kind of memory that should’ve been drenched in joy.

But truthfully? I was numb.

Grateful, yes. But hollow in places that should’ve been full.

 

This was what I had always wanted; the music, the fame, the applause, but it was all being tainted by the darkness I couldn’t escape. Every moment of glitter was shadowed by guilt, confusion, & SHANE. The dream I held onto so tightly as a little girl had finally arrived… but it came wrapped in a storm I wasn’t prepared for.

It was the other side of life... sparkly on the outside, but aching within. I was living two lives. One where I was adored and celebrated. And one where I could barely recognize myself.

Still…

The girl who sang into a karaoke machine with her window cracked open to the world?

She made it.

He still showed up outside my apartment. Still whistled that damn tune like I was supposed to melt. And I did. Every time. Like clockwork. I was a girl looking for her father in men who didn’t deserve to be called man at all.

I had no mom to call, no auntie to vent to. My circle was small, and most of them were on payroll. Who could I tell that my manager, my supposed protector, was the same man breaking me from the inside out?

And Tina? She was still doing my makeup. Every gig. Every show. Lining my lips while unknowingly erasing my sense of self. Sometimes I wondered if she didknow. Maybe she just didn’t want to lose him either. Two women loving one man who loved no one but himself.

Eventually, the music started to sound different. The crowds got louder, but my spirit got quieter. I’d perform with a fake smile, then cry in the bathroom stall while the audience screamed for an encore.

One night, backstage in Seattle, after singing my set, Shane tried to kiss me while Tina was packing up the makeup kit just feet away. And in that moment, something snapped.

 

I didn’t kiss him back.

I just looked at him, really looked, and I saw him for what he was. Not a savior. Not my big break. Just a man playing puppeteer with two women tangled in his strings.

That night, I went back to my hotel room alone.

And for the first time… I prayed.

Not for him to love me. Not for the relationship to work. But for God to get me out.

Because I finally understood: this wasn’t a love story. This was a cautionary tale. And I was done being the warning label.

After the hospital, the spotlight dimmed. I wasn’t just resting, I was hiding. From him. From the world. From the girl I had become while trying to survive him.

I stopped going to the pager shop. Couldn’t stomach the fluorescent lights and the familiar smell of cheap cologne mixed with betrayal. I couldn’t pretend that man wasn’t dangerous to my peace. Still, I kept singing, contracts don’t care about breakdowns. I showed up, glittered up, mic in hand, but my soul was somewhere back in that padded room.

I hadn’t seen Shane in a minute, and honestly, I preferred it that way. But he wanted to meet. So, like always, I agreed. Trauma will have you trained like that; obedient, even when your spirit is screaming no.

We chose the parking lot outside my apartment.

That day, something felt off. My body was sluggish, my stomach uneasy. And then it hit me, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a period. Maybe two months… maybe longer.

I walked to the corner 7-Eleven in a fog. Bought a pregnancy test like I was picking up gum. Like it was just another item on the list. Went home. Took the test.

Two lines. Two. Lines.

This man had already left scars on my heart, and now I was carrying his child. Again.

I didn’t know how to tell him. But I went anyway. Met him in the parking lot like we said. Got in the car. His energy was tight... arms crossed, tone clipped. Not the man I wrote songs about. Not the man who used to bring me fried chicken at midnight. No, this was the angry, defensive version. The one who blamed me for everything he broke.

And just as we started arguing, my phone rang. My mama.

Normally, I would’ve silenced the call. Hid. Lied. Dodged. Because deep down, I knew what she’d say about me being around Shane again.

But not today.

Today, I picked up.

 

“Where you at?” she asked.

"In the parking lot,” I said. “Pull up.”

He looked at me sideways when I said that. Confused. Caught off guard. He didn’t know I had a move to make.

My mom pulled up beside us and stepped out, her face already reading the tension. I invited her to get in the car. Shane was instantly Mr. Nice Guy... smiling, acting like he wasn’t just yelling at me five minutes ago. He knew how to shapeshift when he needed to.

She sat down. Closed the door.

I didn’t sugarcoat it.

“Mom… I’m pregnant.”

Silence. For a beat. Then my mom’s face collapsed.

“Whose is it?”

“It’s Shane’s, Mom.”

The way her face changed, it wasn’t just disappointment. It was heartbreak, confusion, rage. She looked at me like I was the little girl she used to dress for church, now caught in something so heavy, so grown, so dark.

Shane sat there frozen. That fake smile gone. What replaced it wasn’t sadness, it was something scarier. Cold. Like his mask had finally cracked and the real him peeked out for just a second.

I saw her shake her head. Eyes full of tears. Mouth full of words she couldn’t say.

And in that moment, I realized: I had let this man turn me into someone my own mama didn’t recognize.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Shane’s voice turned venom. No more charm. No more game. Just yelling through the phone like I was the one who had wrecked his house of lies.

“You’re crazy!” he shouted. “That’s why you were in the hospital!”

Crazy? That word. That dagger. Used to silence women who get too close to the truth. And he wasn’t done.

“I told her! I told Tina everything. And guess what? She still said yes. I asked her to marry me. She’s my fiancée now.”

That was it. The match hit gasoline. My ears started ringing. My skin felt like fire. I wasn’t in my body anymore... I was somewhere else. Someplace primal, guttural, wild. Rage so thick it could choke a room.

"I need to go to his house,” I told my mom. “Right now.”

She looked at me like I had lost it. But she didn’t argue. Neither did my sister. We got in the car. Three women on a mission, hearts thudding like war drums.

I didn’t even know exactly what I was going to say. All I knew was that it had to end. No more hiding. No more being the other woman in the shadows while he played happy family in the light. If he was gonna choose her, she was gonna know who she was choosing.

We pulled up outside his house like we were in a scene from a movie. My palms were sweaty, heart banging in my ears. It wasn’t just about me anymore, it was about reclaiming my voice.

About looking this lie in the eye and refusing to back down.

I marched up to the door with my sister flanking me and my mother not far behind. 

Lights off, no cars in the driveway.. Knock, knock. No one answered. No one’s home..

It was too quiet when we pulled up. No car in the driveway. No footsteps. Not even a dog barking. Just the weight of everything I’d been carrying sitting heavy on my chest. My mom kept both hands on the wheel like it was holding her together. My sister was up front... eyes scanning the street like she was ready for war, but heart clearly breaking. Me? I got back in the backseat, holding it all in… until I couldn’t.

 

Tears came first. Then the gasping breaths. Then the words.

 

“I’m pregnant again.”

That’s how my sister found out. She knew NOTHING, and the “again” part.. pissed her smooth off. Right there in that car, parked like a warning sign outside his house. She turned around, eyes wide, protective instincts flaring up.

“Don’t stress too hard,” she whispered. “You might hurt the baby.”

The baby.

 

The two words hit me like a bell in a cathedral. I didn’t even know if I could carry it. I didn’t know how far along I was. Hell, I didn’t know if I wanted to carry it. All I knew was I felt like I was cracking in slow motion, and Shane; he was the one holding the hammer.

Then that familiar engine rumble… a blue Ford Expedition.

They pulled in behind us like some royal entrance from hell. Shane and Tina stepped out the car holding hands like they were auditioning for a family portrait. Shane had that smug look, like he had already rewritten the script and cast me as the villain. But this wasn’t his movie. Not anymore.

I rolled the window down. My hands were shaking.

He walked up like he always did, smooth, calm, full of secrets. Then I saw them... Carl and Romeo. The two people who had been with me in the studio, who helped shape “Kiss You,” who saw me as Sassey, not some broken-hearted girl playing tag with trauma. I thought he’d told them. I thought he’d told everyone.

But he hadn’t.

And suddenly, I became the story.

“I’m pregnant,” I shouted from the backseat. “We’ve been sleeping together for over a year. He’s been lying to all of you!”

My voice cracked. My chest burned. Carl stopped walking. Romeo stood up slowly from the curb, head tilted in disbelief.

And Tina… she just looked at me and said, “Didn’t you go to the psych ward?”

Boom.

It was like everything around me went silent, except for the sound of my own spirit breaking.

I screamed. I lost it. My words blurred. My pain got loud. This wasn’t just about a baby or betrayal anymore, this was about being erased, being labeled crazy, being used and discarded like the only thing of value I had was my voice and my thighs.

But the worst part? That look in Carl’s eyes. Like he didn’t know who I was anymore.

This wasn’t a scandal. It was a eulogy... for my career, my peace, my sense of self.

And just like that, the light dimmed on Sassey.

The curtain closed.

The girl who once sang her way into 28 cities?

She just needed silence.

 

After the showdown in front of Shane’s house, me, my sister, my mom, and my broken voice, I climbed in the backseat like a little girl who needed to disappear.

Not one more word on the ride home. The shame spoke loud enough.

I didn’t feel brave or bold.

I felt used,

like a voice that was sampled and looped,

but never truly heard.

 

We got back to my mama’s house, and I collapsed into her couch like it was the last safe place I had.

I cried until my ribs ached, until the air in the room felt too heavy to breathe.

I didn’t know how to be anything anymore. Not a daughter, not an artist, not a girlfriend, not even a woman.

And singing?

That felt like a language I used to speak.

Like something that had left my body the moment I let the truth spill in front of Shane’s house.

Music didn’t feel like healing anymore... it felt like a lie.

I blamed myself.

Of course I did.

That’s what girls like me were trained to do, right?

Make excuses for grown men who shoulda known better.

Tell ourselves we shoulda known better, too.

But I was nineteen.

I was young. I was gifted. I was afraid.

And yeah, looking back, I was naive as hell.

 

Weeks went by in a blur of static.

One day, I got up enough nerve to go to the doctor.

And there it was: 18 weeks.

 

I had been walking around carrying life,

and hadn’t even given myself the space to decide what life I wanted.

 

Then came the letter.

Typed.

Stamped.

Branded with the label I thought was my dream.

 

“Congratulations on your baby!

Unfortunately, we don’t think a 19-year-old single mother aligns with the image we’re cultivating for our artists…”

 

That wasn’t support. That was a sentence.

 

And I knew what they were saying without saying it:

CHOOSE. 

 

The letter slipped from my hands.

My fingers were trembling, my body numb.

My heart wasn’t beating the same.

And even though I hadn’t been sure I wanted to be a mom,

something inside me stirred, like a light in a tunnel that had no exit.

 

I called the clinic.

The same one Shane dragged me to without asking the first time.

I asked about my options.

They said 25 weeks was the cut-off.

So I made the appointment.

Not because I was sure.

But because when the world tries to take your voice,

you try to reclaim any choice you can.

 

You ever hold a letter so tight your fingerprints start to bleed through the paper?

That’s how hard I held on to that lie.

 

A letter that told me the baby in my belly

wasn’t marketable.

That being a mother meant I no longer deserved a mic.

That dreams could only exist in a womb that stayed empty.

 

But you know what’s crazy?

I never checked if that letter was real.

Not the stamp.

Not the signature.

Not the return address.

Because when you’re drowning, you don’t ask if the rope is frayed... you just grab it.

 

And I grabbed that lie like it was a lifeline.

Walked right into that clinic again, this time conscious, this time broken,

and I signed away another piece of myself.

This time, no gas.

No corny jokes from the doctor.

Just the echo of my own voice in a sterile room,

whispering, I’m sorry.

 

But it wasn’t over.

Shame don’t let you clock out early.

 

Because not long after, that same label I bent backwards for?

Filed a lawsuit.

Said I was in breach of contract.

Said my “image” had shifted.

Said I wasn’t what they’d signed up for.

 

And maybe, maybe, if I’d kept the baby,

they’d still have sued me.

Maybe if I had stayed quiet, or fought louder, or run away altogether... 

none of it would have changed.

 

But it did change me.

Because I realized something:

The real breach of contract

wasn’t between me and that label.

It was between me and the lies I’d been fed.

Between the girl I used to be and the woman I was being forced to become.

 

And that’s a lawsuit no lawyer can fight.

Only healing can. 

 

I didn’t know.

And I don’t say that to dodge blame or soften the blow. I say it because the truth deserves to be told exactly as it lived in me. When Shane and I first started seeing each other, he told me he had kids with a woman who lived in Arizona. She wasn’t in the picture, he said. He painted a story I was desperate to believe, one where there was room for me.

And for a while, it looked like that. I didn’t see her. I didn’t hear about her. The space between them was his doing, but it made me feel like I wasn’t trespassing. It made me feel chosen.

 

That’s the catch.

 

By the time I realized Tina was more than a name and a backstory, I was already in deep. In love, or what I thought love was supposed to be. The kind that made you ignore the red flags and believe in potential instead of reality. I wanted to trust him so badly. I wanted us to be real. And when someone looks you in the eyes and tells you you’re not doing anything wrong, you believe them… especially when you’re young, naïve, and carrying the weight of an empty love tank from childhood.

 

People might read this and decide I was a homewrecker. Maybe in her story, I’m the villain. And that’s fair. I did damage something sacred, even if I didn’t realize how sacred it was at the time. I believed him, and that belief cost someone else her peace. That truth has lived with me like a scar beneath my skin.

 

If I could speak to Tina today, I’d say this: I am sorry. Not a performative sorry, not a “because I got caught” sorry. A deep, belly-born sorrow for every moment she felt confused, hurt, betrayed. She didn’t deserve the chaos, the secrets, or the pain. She deserved honesty. And I was part of the lie, even if I didn’t start it.

 

After everything crumbled, I packed my life into boxes and moved back in with my mom. I couldn’t keep answering Shane’s calls or showing up to performances pretending like I wasn’t dying inside. So I stopped. Cold. Like ripping out an IV and hoping you don’t bleed out.

 

I started seeing someone else. I won’t say it was love; maybe more like a life raft I clung to in the flood of my emotions. And then, like life was trying to write a new chapter for me whether I was ready or not, I found out I was pregnant again.

 

But this time?

 

Nobody was making the decision for me.

 

Not a man.

Not a doctor.

Not a fear disguised as ambition.

 

This time, I was going to be a mother.

 

So that was that.

 

The girl who once lived in the haze of spotlight and secrets now stood behind a gas station counter with swollen feet and a baby growing in her belly. Not just any baby, my baby.

My decision. My chance to start again, but this time with a clarity that couldn’t be shaken. I wasn’t just becoming a mom. I was becoming the best mom I knew how to be.

The gas station wasn’t glamorous. It smelled like motor oil and coffee that’d been on the burner too long. But it was mine... for now. A new rhythm. A different kind of spotlight. And sometimes, when the radio played my song, my song, I’d hear the echo of who I used to be. I’d be ringing up scratch tickets and slushies, and someone would freeze mid-transaction and say, “Wait… are you Sassey?”

 

Yeah. I was.

 

I didn’t lie about it, and I didn’t flinch either. Not anymore. Even though part of me carried that quiet shame, like, this ain’t what I pictured when I was up at night writing hooks in my notebook. I thought fame would look like red carpets and private jets, not oil changes and pregnancy cravings.

But what I did have was this new fire in my chest. My belly grew round, and so did my excitement. I was having a boy. A son. My son. And even though his father, God bless him, turned out to be unstable and cruel, I knew this wasn’t about him. He denied my child for most of his life, never showed up the way he should’ve. But that didn’t change the way I showed up.

 

I didn’t keep my baby out of spite, or desperation, or loneliness. I kept him because something shifted in my soul when I saw that plus sign on the test. It was like God whispered, You’ve been searching for someone to love you like this.

 

His name was

Dontae Nicholaus Myrick.

Born June 22, 2003.

My summer baby.

5 pounds, 3 ounces. 22 inches long. A head full of hair and fingers like piano keys.

 

He looked at me like I was the whole damn world. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to earn it. I didn’t have to sing for it, fight for it, hide for it, or beg for it. He just loved me. Just like that.

 

Maybe that was the feeling I’d been chasing all along.

 

I didn’t hear much from Shane after that. Honestly, good riddance. I heard he thought my son might be his, which was hilarious considering the dates didn’t line up, and I’d rather raise a baby alone than ever let that lie breathe.

 

This new chapter was about God, growth, and grit. I didn’t know what the future would hold, but I knew one thing: I had been gifted a life that gave me purpose. I had been trusted to love a child the way I always wanted to be loved.

 

And even though life was about to get harder… it was finally starting to feel real.

Beyond the Hit