The Champagne Soapbox

My name’s Bailey Champagne. I’m 23 years old, and I work for a living at a job. I have a bedtime of 11pm on a good day, 2am on a really good day. I have a cat who is now one- I think that makes 15 in cat years. I live in Austin, I used to see myself here forever, I’m not sure about that anymore or about anything- other than the next day maybe. Being alone in your college apartment is comforting. Being alone in your apartment that you pay for is necessary, complete with a personal rebrand and a cat that cries for its dinner. I have a sister, who knows Bailey best other than my parents. I’m the oldest child of two, the standard for which my sister separates herself from maturely. You can hear my dad in my humor, I have to thank him for that. You can hear my mom in my advice, I have her to thank for that. You can hear Billy when Bailey fails, and I loathe her for that.

Billy was born from drunken slurs of men trying to say my name but never held intention to understand my words clearly. She was, is, relevant to an inner child but more reliant on self-destruction for social acceptance. She spoke through bat shit eyelashes, whatever she could mutter replicating the same speech of those who named her. She was quite skilled at sneaking drinks from willing pocketbooks and witty personas. She was a liability for the guilty behaviors Bailey wouldn’t claim as her own. The chaotic fun girl who squeezes her body through crowds just to find a table to stand on. To lock her knees and scream “accept my crazy, but in a chaotic fun girl way”. The crowd would stretch my arms so far that upon rebound I was a wrinkly fetus of who I saw reflected in mirrors.

I don’t think people pay attention to me enough to see me squeeze my body through the crowd, feeling so uncomfortable between the sweat of slurring men and vulnerable girls. I struggle more to find an expensive car with unknown driver, even though I wanted to leave early anyway. I fob myself through the gate and finally feel my chest lower once I slip into the silent depression of an unmade bed. I get up, I’ll lay around, and I’ll get up, and lay back down. This season of singleness, there’s no place like watching my life pass through the comfort of a broken-in room. The silent and sobering Bailey wakes up from her nightly death to find Billy’s fandom fatal ego reborn. Window to the phone. I’ll wake up and make plans, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re scared that you might be depressed.

Bailey is at a point of realization of identity, again, always now a days. I guess that’s a thing that happens at 23, when you work from home and feeling like you’ve been at home since the pandemic began when you were 20. I felt so young when I behaved 23, now I’ve grown into a tall child with mild anxiety and wild performance syndrome. The perfect balance of my light femininity and love of the deep dark stuff, all wrapped up in an oxymoron of a smart human.

To think of it, I’ve always been into the deep dark stuff. Let’s just say that’s the scorpio in me. The guilt behind asking for advice, the halt of emotions after the action is over, the rush of contemplating an explanation for said action and professing opinions like you’re running for office (or from yourself). Campaign for Champagne just like I posted around for fifth grade politics. It’s a rush to scratch the deepest part of your wounds and realize you have the same evolutionary evidence as someone else, mentally that is. I like to think that Billy is part of that dark stuff, but as much as I can convince myself- I cant accept the fact how shallow she is. She pretends to drown herself in order for someone to realize she wants help compared to Bailey, who fights daily to float above it all. In fact, I’m so used to holding my nose and stretching my socially wrinkled arms to reach the edge of the pool. Being at a party and feeling like an open wound, all the people ask if I’m going to put a bandaid on it. Bailey would nod, Billy would scream.

I guess “Billy” (which if you haven’t caught on, is a big metaphor for my party persona) is the offspring of the child who never asked for attention but received it anyway, but who instead demands attention as if it’s an earned prize. In some way, like all fun friends, Billy was a liability. In another way, she’s greatest pool float I could find when Bailey was holding her nose and trying to stay afloat like a wrinkled fetus. It was an identity that felt needed to remain active in order to feed Bailey’s damaged identity from seeking other approval, outside of herself, because Bailey is always (say it with me) going to find it on her own anyway. She’s a sort of dissociation that allows me to show others I’m worthy of performative socialization, temporary flirtations, or validating secretive motivations. Break her down a bit more and you’ll find Bailey asking you to lay by her.

Billy is sure an alter ego – who mirrors my insecurity of feeling like social praise is a reward, mostly in confronting events. The outspoken Bailey, the chaotic Bailey, the good at fun Bailey all wrapped up in some entanglement I created to eliminate the processing of minute responsibility. When you suffer from seasonal depression, or you process events the way a rollercoaster rolls, you kind of form these imaginary motivations to avoid the seatbelt from releasing at the top of the hill (healing is a life long ride, buckle up). I understand that I never felt accepted enough socially to stand on this table in my given name and lock my knees to say “accept my crazy, but in an empathetic and innocent way”.

And this is all to say that, Billy and Bailey are much the same – she is me and my honest imagination after all. To dismiss Billy is to assume she isn’t of my own creation, an act to deny myself of further acceptance for the parts of me I may feel uncomfortable or too comfortable with about. She is the crutch to an injury I may have inflicted: the smiling angel face to a gut punch of demonized anxiety. The cheerleader, the performer, the mirrorball and all. Let me admit we have a duty to ourselves to embrace our singular selfs, the duality of ourselves, the multiple parts of ourselves that make us ourself.

I hope if you struggle with identity, you find some relativity in this. I found myself blaming Billy for things Bailey did, in a bad way. I found myself laughing at things Billy said when it came out of Bailey’s mouth, in a good way. This is a long way to say at the end of the day, I am okay. If you suffer from seasonal depression, avoidance of said emptiness until it overwhelms you, I found that the part I once understood as distraction was actually my greatest therapy. That’s through savoring my connections, a worn discrepancy between what I thought Billy favored but truly a deep necessity for Bailey to have to feel supported, loved, human, grounded. The window will be there to watch when you come home and the phone will be there when you wake up to set up tomorrows plans. Just give yourself grace, there are so many parts of yourself you haven’t met yet.

Seriously though I am very happy.