“You taught my heart a sense I never knew I had.”
Now that I’ve officially started a blog with a quote from an Emo song, I’m back to officially being a 13 year-old writing on their livejournal. I mean, it’s not that far off to be honest. As you can tell, I’ve recently re-discovered the song “My Heroine” by Silverstein. It’s pretty typical for me to dive super deeply into a song for a while. Looking back through them now I can almost see the emotion I was feeling at the time, and why a particular song resonated with me so deeply.
There was a time when I had two such songs at once. They represented two aspects of a friendship I had. The first song was “Get Over It” by OK Go. If you’re unfamiliar with this song, it’s very aggressive with its strong drums, and power chords. The verses are confronting one individuals method of coping with life. Blaming everyone and everything around them, instead of fighting through their difficulties, they “Find someone to blame.” I very specifically felt this way about that person, they always had some reason for not getting things done. Their struggle was special, they were the only one in the world this was happening to. I wanted nothing more in the world to yell “Get over it!” at them, and move on with my life.
The other side of the coin with this individual was the fact that I felt like I was falling for it every time. They would come to be when they were distressed, as an emotional parasite. I was so tired of this person draining the life out of me when they needed me, but never giving anything back. That’s where “The Science of Selling Yourself Short” comes in. I knew that I was being used, and I knew that I was letting it happen. “I’m so over dosed on apathy and burnt out on sympathy” is exactly how I felt at the time. If you’re not going to change your life, there’s only so long I can be sympathetic to your plight.
This was during a time when I cut this person out of my life. Just, completely cut off communication. It’s interesting how hard it hit me. In some ways, it makes sense. The idea of hurting someone is something that I struggle with, even if it’s a situation like this one where I had to hurt this person for the sake of my own survival. Even then, I could feel what I was doing in every part of my body.
The next such song I can think of is “Recovery” by Frank Turner. This song came to me when I let a Spotify playlist keep going after it was over. I can recall the exact moment when I first heard it. It cut me to the core. At the time, I’d been in mourning of a relationship which had ended, and just completely wrecked me (See my LAST blog post). “Well, darling, now I’m sinking, and I’m as lost as lost can be and I was hoping you could drag me up from down here towards my recovery”. I was shook to the core, I’d been working so hard to get over this relationship. Trying so hard to recover from it, covering up my pain and the fact that I’d hit rock bottom.
This song has such a painful message behind it, while covering it up with an upbeat exterior. “Broken people can get better if they really want to
Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to
Survive!” is another line that cut me deep. The thought that I might be able to get out of the hole I was in was unthinkable, this simultaneously gave me hope that I could get better, but also recognized that it was difficult something that may never happen. This is such a drastic departure from other post breakup songs, which harbor anger towards a partner which hurt them, or the message that time will fix everything.
“The Way I Tend To Be” by Frank Turner feels like the next step after “Recovery”. It feels like he’s finally improved somewhat from when the previous song, but his previous relationship still colors everything he does. He’s living his live again for the first time since things ended, but he still thinks about it all the time. “‘Cause it turns out hell will not be found
Within the fires below, but in making do and muddling through when you’ve nowhere else to go.” was such a fitting line for me when I was right there. Just trying to dig through my day to day and get things back to normal. “And then I catch myself catching your scent on someone else in a crowded space and it takes me somewhere I cannot quite place.” This literally happened to me. I’d be doing well, moving on and having a great day, and then I’d see someone with hair which looked like their’s. I’d feel my heart jump into my throat, and my entire mood would shift into darkness. I’d want to lock myself in a conference room and cry… and I did.
Which leads me to “My Heroine” by Silverstein. This song has been my most recent obsession. Every bit of this song describes that relationship. I can’t think of a better metaphor for them than “My Heroine”, the pun of “Heroine” as a hero, and of course “Heroin”. Looking back on that relationship… 18 months removed, I can finally see what they were to me. They were an addiction which hurt me. I wanted to be with them all the time. I wanted it to last forever, and in the beginning it was amazing. I was over the moon, but the longer things went , the worse things got for me. The more I wanted to try and fix it, and give and give and give, the more they withdrew (I’ve also been reading about attachment theory and this relationship, which is probably another whole series of blogs in and of itself).
During this time I learned that I could feel things so strongly that I hadn’t felt before, and haven’t since. I remember feeling like the entire world of emotion was entering my body at once, and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t know what to do with it. After it was over, the thought of her was enough to give me an anxiety attack. The sight of her would raise my blood pressure. And I’d go back to her and get the bare minimum that I needed to keep going. The problem is, the bare minimum would keep up my addiction. I thought it would keep me going, and it would wean me off of her, but really all it did was maintain my addiction. I needed to detox… I feel like I’ve done that now. Now I know that is what I needed, it was hard to stop, but I couldn’t handle just being friends.
Now I’m to the point where I feel the urge to go back, to try to be friends, and I really just need to keep her out of my life. Much like an addict, I need to stay sober. If I have another hit, I’m going to fall back into addiction. I can’t control myself around her. Now that I, and the people around me, have put in so much work, so much time to move forward, I can’t let them down by falling back to that dark place I was.
It physically pains me to realize that’s what I need to do, but at the end of the day, I need to take care of myself, and do what’s best for my own mental health. I’m finally to a place where I can move forward, and I can jeopardize that for another hit.