When you’re in the thick of it, it’s an everyday party, sister. It’s good times, and the pills you’re taking mask it, so you have no clue you’re run down and about to burn out. You’re just into what you’re doin’, and when it’s done, you’re rarin’ for what’s up next.

And our music is out there, it’s getting heard and people love it. We’re onstage and they’re singing our words back to us in this wall of sound and that…

Man, that…

Except the love of a good woman and becoming a father, there is no better feeling than that, and seein’ as the love of a good woman and being a father is everything times about a million, that’s sayin’ something.

My father would have been proud.

And my mother was against it at first…

But she died proud of me.

What I’m saying is, even doing this right now with you, looking back at all of this under a microscope, I would do it again.

I wouldn’t have to think for even a second about it.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

The thing is, you’re in it. You went for it. You bought into the dream. Made your deal. Sold your soul. Whatever.

You wanted it.

And if you go for it and you have luck or talent or you work hard for it or all three, however you get there, you get it.

The ones you love.

That’s a different story.

Lyla:

It was, and still is, very sweet, even if it was, and still is, upsetting how the guys reacted to all that happened to me.

But it didn’t really bother me.

Honestly, although it was tough at first, you get used to it pretty fast, especially if why it’s coming at you is worth putting up with it.

They had a mind to me, they always did. All of them.

But that period of my life was not about any of that.

I learned very quickly none of that mattered.

It was about losing my mother, which is something you never get over.

And since Mom moved us in with them when I was eight, my grandparents were really my parents too, so losing them was the same.

They all went so fast, it felt like it was one after the other, and with everything else going on, I couldn’t cope.

I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have Preacher and the band.

My family was dying.

And there I was, with a new family.

I’m in school. I’m graduating from school. I’m trying to find a job. Discover who I am, what I’m about.

And the only thing I’m sure of in all of that, the only thing that’s solid, is Preacher.