As an artist, a huge part of what drives me is giving people the space in which they feel safe to explore their vulnerability. We live in a time where it feels as though we almost need permission to really expose our wounds and heal. Being vulnerable and admitting that you aren’t okay is often seen as being weak, which leaves a lot of people with these bottled up emotions, and without the tools to really be able to face themselves or their issues. But with music, you have the potential to open up a dialogue and space in which self can be explored and understood. That's what music was for me growing up. It was a lens through which I was able to better examine myself and work through whatever struggles I was faced with. Because through the words of the artists I looked up to, I was able to see myself, and dive into these emotions that I didn’t know how to face otherwise. And that's where my EP was born from, from a place of exploration and yearning to really look at what I was going through in order to be able to heal and move on. It is my hope that people will listen to it and feel like they have permission to respect themselves enough to truly face their demons and begin to heal.
CRISIS tells the story of my experience with love and heartbreak, diving deep into my loss of self in the midst of loving someone else. These songs were me giving myself permission to truly fall apart, in a healthy and constructive way -- rather than using the self-destructive methods I had previously been abusing in order to numb and distract myself from what was actually going on. This person that I was in a relationship with helped me to feel seen, wanted, safe, and loved in a way that I had never experienced before because I grew up really afraid to allow someone to see me like that or get that close to my heart. Growing up I had this sort of jaded idea that love was this fickle thing that didn’t last or that wasn’t worth the risk of being hurt. But my partner told me we were worth that risk, and that I was worth that risk, and that was something I had never heard before.
From there, I sort of lost my grip on reality, and on myself. I gave everything to this relationship, or to the idea of the relationship, and had this twisted belief that he would be the only person who would ever love me like that. That just resulted in me being completely disconnected from myself. I had no sense of self-worth outside of us. So when the relationship ended, I was devastated. I felt abandoned and betrayed. I turned to other men, alcohol, drugs, partying, work and money, school, anything but myself, in order to distract from the fact that I wasn’t sure how to love myself.
It got to a really awful and destructive point where I had pushed away the people I loved and was abusing all these different crutches. I woke up one morning and saw how bad things were getting, and realized I either made the choice to face the pain and change how I was dealing with it -- by actually working through it -- or I would get to a point where there would be no going back. I would be completely isolated and unable to get myself out of a very deep hole of harming behavior. And so I changed. It wasn’t overnight miraculous healing. It took time, LOTS of time, and was very painful and hard. But, I made that choice.
I decided I was worth more than how I was treating myself. And that's where this project came in! It was a part of my process of being able to face myself and talk through my experience. It removed the fog that I had created around how I was feeling and why I was feeling those things and allowed for me to hold myself accountable.
I think I’m only really now finding true clarity. Now that the project is out, I’ve been able to truly let go of whatever I may have still been holding onto from all of this. And that's so beautiful, to be able to share this story, literally let it go into the Universe, and say that I am finally starting to see and love myself in a real way.
Links To Phé
Website: https://www.phemusic.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/phemusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phemusic/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/phemusicofficial
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