There are days…
There are days I miss things so intensely, so completely that it consumes me. I am, quite literally, frozen with loneliness. I have never been able to understand it either. I have always been obsessed with an idea of the future but it has recently occurred to me that I will never get to a future without letting go of my version of the past.
There are days where I do nothing but think of alternate outcomes to my life. I try to imagine where I would be if just one thing had gone differently along the way. Would I be stuck in some awful middle-management position I hated? Would it be worse? Would I know any different, like something was off that I just couldn’t pin point? Is everything predestined and no matter the path you take in life it is the path meant just for you? Is free will just an idea to make fate seem less final? Do I really need to control my destiny? I think life may be easier giving into the notion life is what it is.
There are days I spend its entirety thinking of song lyrics to quote that would sum up how I feel but never say them.
There are days I only listen to songs I know you like so I can pretend to be closer. I put them on and I think about you telling me how much you love them for one reason or another. I pretend I love them for that reason too but it is all a lie I tell myself to feel connected.
There are days I am inexplicably happy. These are fewer and further between lately, but they aren’t gone completely.
There are days I almost forget to be miserable. These are the most bitter-sweet. You can spend an entire day feeling normal and just before your mind gives into your body and drifts away to another land the misery washes over you. You just try to hold onto the good moments.
There are days I think about writing. I think about telling everyone anything, everything. I think I may have something truly profound to say. Something that will change someone in the same way A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius did to me. That book wrecked me. I knew I could never write anything that good, that complete, that…honest. It also made me want to try.
There are days I put on an embarrassing song and dance. I dance around and pretend I am in a movie montage, usually of the 80’s persuasion.
There are days where everything feels like it is exactly as it should be. My friends are happy. My family is well. My bank account isn’t completely barren. These days I know everything is ok. It has always been ok. It will always be ok.
There are days like today.
If song lyrics could write my biography, that would be weird. However, they would sound a little like this:
“It is true what you say, I live like a hermit in my own head” Death Cab for Cutie Marching Bands of Manhattan
“Though the corners are lit, the dark can return with the flip of a switch. It hasn’t turned on me yet, yet.” Frightened Rabbit Not Miserable
“And I’ve been waiting all this life, in the company of one. And I know I am young,
but I don’t want to be alone. If you could only just consider the two of us and I know darling, I could be so good to you” Brett Dennen Desert Sunrise
“And the seasons will change us new, be the best I’ve known. And you know me
I could not be stuck on you, if it were true” Blind Pilot 3 Rounds and a Sound
“A lot goes on, but nothing happens” Ben Lee Nothing Much Happens
“You are my sweetest downfall” Regina Spektor Samson
“When you love someone but bite your tongue all you get is a mouthful of blood” Fruit Bats When U Love Someone
There are days I could go on forever quoting other people’s emotions through song. Today is not that day.
