Idol: My Drug of Choice

Only 12 days into the new year and I begin another American Idol journey. If you don’t know already, I’m a huge Idol fan,  but it wasn’t always that way.

It wasn’t until season 3, AKA, the Fantasia season, that Idol became my drug of choice. That year, it took everything I had just to function. Everything around me was a blur and I walked and talked in slow motion.  I wasn’t living…I was just being. With a shattered heart, I couldn’t imagine what was next for my life, but then came American Idol. Idol became my escape from the hurt, the Michigan cold and the loneliness only heartbreak can impose.

I didn’t just see Idol as a talent contest, I saw it as a second chance for lost dreams.  A chance to be you and to live your life the way God had intended. I realized then that there was a plan, albeit I didn’t know the plan yet, but I knew that  someday my soul would awaken to new dreams, and a new plan.  So through the  4 months of Fantasia, Jennifer Hudson, Diana DeGarmo and even the grandma loving, redhead, John Stevens, I came to believe that I too could get up and “perform” again. I started to believe that through the loss, I can win.

That year, I became loyal to the Idol machine.  Even in its low moments, Sanjaya, Chris Daughtry vote off and Taylor Hicks win, I continued on.  And so tonight, as Idol embarks on its 9th season, I’ll continue on, not for the talent or even the fun of watching the horrible auditions, but for what it gave me in 2004: hope.