Midnight Cowgirl: A Heroine’s Journey

By Amy Midgett

This is a folklore memoir of my heroic journey to self-discovery. My intention of this book is to not simply tell you the story of my life, but to use it as a tool to awaken your imagination. Along the yellow brick road, you will face many obstacles. With faith and trust, you somehow always manage to find yourself back home. Home being your heart. Home being the eyes staring back at you in the mirror. This life is very mysterious. Sometimes it takes a tornado in life to lead you to the rainbow. Through it all, there is an invisible force guiding you along the way. Do not judge the storms that pass through your life. Maybe just maybe the storm is the pot of gold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Midgett
• Release date: Aug 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393726203

Book preview

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book

to my two angels who drop pennies from heaven.

My best friend, Kelli, you hold my right hand.

My sweet divine mother, you hold my left.

Together, you walk me through my time left on this earth.

Even though I cannot see you, I feel you.

Thank you for letting me know you are near.

It is in your hands my path becomes clear.

Prologue

This is a folklore memoir of my heroic journey to self-discovery. My intention of this book is to not simply tell you the story of my life, but to use it as a tool to awaken your imagination. Along the yellow brick road, you will face many obstacles. With faith and trust, you somehow always manage to find yourself back home. Home being your heart. Home being the eyes staring back at you in the mirror. This life is very mysterious. Sometimes it takes a tornado in life to lead you to the rainbow. Through it all, there is an invisible force guiding you along the way. Do not judge the storms that pass through your life. Maybe just maybe the storm is the pot of gold.

Midnight Cowgirl

Verse One

Somewhere on an open road

She don’t know where it goes

Follows the yellow bricks ‘til the sands between her toes

Somewhere on a mountaintop

She will stop to think about

The faces and the places that she’s seen

She keeps running and don’t know why

Chorus

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

Her rodeo is the fight of her life

Under the stars of her loves gone by

The devil’s backbone will be her guide

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

Verse Two

Underneath the northern lights in those whispering pines

She will find herself again

Fountain of youth is on her side

Violet fire burns that California sky

She’s done running from her life

Chorus

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

Her rodeo is the fight of her life

Under the stars of her loves gone by

The devil’s backbone will be her guide

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

Bridge

She’s seen a lot of crazy things in those tornado eyes

Her storms rage deep inside

Chorus

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

Her rodeo is the fight of her life

Under the stars of her loves gone by

The devil’s backbone will be her guide

Midnight Cowgirl under the velvet sky

She’s seen a lot of crazy things in those tornado eyes

Introduction

Once upon a time, in the swamps of Georgia, a little girl from the Taurus skies took her first breath. I was supposed to be a boy named Mark, but nope. Surprise: I am a girl. My parents quickly turned to the ‘A section’ of a baby-names book to name me. No boy, sorry. They named me Amy.

Learning to walk in a log cabin, I quickly acquired the nickname Prissymae. I was also obsessed with Shera and asked for a Shera’s castle every year for Christmas. I never got one. Then, my family moved near Nashville, Tennessee to a little town called Murfreesboro when I was five. I loved elementary school. Because of the Leo in me, I was often the teacher’s pet. Third grade was my favorite, and Ms. Gritton was my teacher. We learned multiplication tables, and Ms. Gritton had a song we would sing to help us. It was called The Hot Seat. When it was my turn, the class would sing, Amy’s in the hot seat, Amy’s in the hot seat. Let’s just say that became the theme song of my life.

I don’t remember much of my younger years, except that I would feel things really deeply.  I would always write in a journal, trying to channel whatever I was feeling. I never quite understood what being an empath meant until later on in life. That is probably why I wrote so much. I loved cheerleading and cheered all the way up the ladder, eventually in the NFL. It seems appropriate, though, to begin the journey at middle school, where my first encounter of love began.

Prissymae

First Dance

Ready? Okay.

I held my black and gold pom-poms in my hands. Go. Fight. Win. Welcome to middle school, the awkward years of life.

Bangs and braces, I was quite the sight. I had a cute cheerleader skirt though to make up for it. I was a good student and quite the tomboy. Maybe the tomboy part was because of my dad, who always wanted that boy. I was also the pull-up champion in gym class. I loved challenges.

But my first encounter with the feeling of love happened in seventh grade. Nick was my first crush. His initials were N.O. That was my sign right there. No! Stay away from boys. This was the first time I can remember this particular feeling about wanting or desiring a man’s attention. I went to lengths to make this happen, and it consumed me for a majority of my life. I used to think it was a curse, but as time always tells, the past always makes sense in the future.

Nick asked me to my first dance. I wore a white dress with colorful daisies on it. We danced an arm’s-length apart and had our picture made. My hands were sweaty the whole night. Afterwards, the little girl’s fantasy of being married began. Something about that feeling of love just consumed every cell in my body. And along with it, I also got picked on a lot. I’m not sure why, but maybe the empath in me created an easy target. In eighth grade, I had a pipe drain in my neighborhood that had Enter the Death of Amy Midgett spray-painted on it. You could look inside and see witches doing spells with fire. It was crazy.

Middle school was like this—full of love, spells, and witches. There I was: shaking my black and gold pom-poms and just trying to find my prince charming. Why would someone want to kill me? Maybe high school would lead me to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Central Middle School

Wide Open Spaces

Tumbling across the floor as the crowd counted my back handsprings, into my freshman year of high school I went. Go. Fight. Win.

I had many crushes that year. Maybe the new red and blue pom-poms would bring some luck. Of course! I started dating the freshman quarterback. How romantic, cheering for the quarterback on the sidelines. He would also be my first kiss. That relationship only lasted till the end of the season. It seemed like high school was off to a good start.

I also remember a lecture we had that year. The speaker talked about car accidents and the high odds of us losing someone close to us in high school. I always remembered that lecture, for the soul always knows what to remember.

Sophomore year brought back the spells though. I got my driver’s license and when my license plate arrived in the mail, it was 666. Maybe the middle school witches were still around. My parents sent that one back.

My first car, the Corsica, would not be cursed after all. Corsica, the mountainous island, is known as Kalliste. Kalliste means the most beautiful. Silly witches, you can’t curse the most beautiful. I also got Mono, the kissing disease, that year. Prissymae had to kiss many toads to find her prince.

My boyfriend that year was older than me. Let’s just call him the knight. He would always say, Nobody is twisted like you and me. Thank you, Keith Sweat, for melting my heart.

My second boyfriend that year would honk when he was outside my house to pick me up. Our song was Cupid by 112. Maybe he wasn’t into Keith Sweat, but I would spend hours de-coding pager messages from him. This was not the cupid I had dreamed of though. Where was the romance? Honking and silly numerical messages? Love is a funny thing.

Cupid’s best friend became my next fling. You could hear his car speakers from a mile away when he was coming to pick me up. I wore his class ring. I wore his baseball jersey. His ex-girlfriend would drive by my house to honk and yell names. You know, typical high school drama.

I also met my best friend, Kelli, my sophomore year. We were two peas in a pod. Whenever I got sick, she would take me to McDonald’s to make me feel better. We were always together, writing each other notes about our latest boy drama. We had fun shaking our red and blue pom-poms together.

Junior year, I was still into the baseball uniforms. Can you blame me? I started dating the pitcher. He would put his seat back as far as it would go in his car and slouch to the side. He always took me to Taco Bell. He stuck around for a while. Something about them taco dates, I suppose. We won the state championship in cheerleading that year. Kelli and I really thought we were something. We were on cloud nine. We were both good at school, but prince charming and cheerleading were our favorite subjects. Dixie Chicks were our home girls, and the Corsica provided the most beautiful ride in which we could sing with them.

Senior year changed my life though. The spells seemed to be stronger than ever. Sometimes people would throw suckers at me in the hall. My house got rolled and someone wrote slut in my yard. Remember the ex-girlfriend who used to drive by my house? She worked in the yearbook department and left my cheerleading picture out of my senior yearbook. I also broke up with the pitcher. No more taco dates for me. Love is a funny thing and makes people do silly things. I was just a high school girl riding around in a Corsica with Kelli singing Cowboy Take Me Away.

Shockingly, I got voted on the homecoming court my senior year. I always made an effort to be nice to everyone, even through dodging suckers. I often struggled to understand why some people acted the way they did. I got to wear my first wedding dress though; I was so excited. Kelli bought me a piggy bank for a present. She told me to keep my wishes in there. She was always coming up with silly presents and ideas. I got to be Cinderella for a night, then went to spend the night with Kelli afterwards. We stayed up all night fantasizing about our wedding day. Then, two days before Christmas my senior year, my whole life changed.

December 23, 1999, started off with cheerleading practice. Afterwards, I went to go pick Kelli up in the Corsica. We were going to hangout with some boys, of course. We got in the car with the boys and went to Shoney’s to have a hot fudge brownie sundae. Then, on the way back to get my car, the lecture I heard my freshman year came true. I have to be very detailed in this explanation. In the car, the driver and Kelli were in the front, and I was behind the driver with my crush behind Kelli in the back. The boys decided to go down Osborne Lane to go back home. At the beginning of Osborne Lane, Kelli asked the driver to pull over because she wanted to get in the back with me. He pulled over, and Kelli got in the back. Off we went. The boys started talking about getting air over the little bridge at the end of the road. The driver was speeding up, and Kelli moved over and grabbed my arm. I asked him to slow down because we were getting scared. The last thing I remember is seeing headlights coming towards us and hitting my head against the side of the car. We didn’t have our seatbelts on. The car flipped. Kelli and I were both thrown from the car. Both boys remained inside. We wrecked by the bridge.

Somehow, I landed safely in the creek. My only injury was a minor skull fracture. Unfortunately, though, Kelli didn’t make it. I was knocked unconscious, so I just remember waking up in an ambulance with my dad there. No one would answer me when I asked about Kelli. I don’t remember being unconscious, but I do. I was in this silent place, and I wondered if anyone would find me. It was complete silence—stillness and emptiness. The space between the inhale and exhale. It was the space between the words on this page. It was almost like my soul had a long timeout in the space between. You have to believe in angels after a night like this. To be ejected from a car with no glass marks and to travel through trees and land in a creek? My time on this earth was not over. Why was Kelli’s? At 17, the space between seemed like a better option to be in.

I was heartbroken. The pain I had always felt in my heart as a child was heightened. The tears would fall and fall. Did Kelli know it was her time? Remember, she switched seats about five minutes before the wreck happened. Again, the soul knows. I was just convinced: the soul knows. Just like my soul knew during that lecture my freshman year, Kelli’s soul knew it was her time.

We went to go pick up my car on Christmas Day. It was a foggy night. I got inside and started backing up the driveway. I glance toward the backseat and on the fogged up window it said Kelli. Angels do exist, especially in a car named the most beautiful. My time was not done here on earth. An angel was watching over me. She needed Wide Open Spaces.

She traveled this road as a child

Wide-eyed and grinning, she never tired

But now she won’t be coming back with the rest

If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

She needs wide open spaces

Room to make her big mistakes

She needs new faces

She knows the high stakes

This was the not the pot of gold I was expecting at the end of my high school rainbow. Three months before graduation, I was in the paper as being dead. Yes, you read that right. I had to go on the school video announcements as the principal let everyone know I was alive. Needless to say, I was ready to graduate and move forward. Did something want me dead? The angels saved me from the wreck. Middle school witches. Love and spells once again were in my veins. Good and evil—the battle was being played out right before my eyes. Amy’s in the hot