The Big Spring Clean
I have a playlist of songs that I can’t touch. I can’t click on the list. I can’t look at it, open it up, think about it, delete it. It’s just there, on my phone, looking at me, waiting for me to make a decision.
Delete the songs.
Do it now.
One by one.
Just do it.
Right now.
Every time I’m faced with the playlist, I just ignore it. As time has gone by, newer playlists have been added, so *that* playlist has just disappeared further down the list. I never seem to delete songs, I just add more music. More songs. More memories. More emotion than I can bring myself to deal with. 16GB turns into 32GB, then 64GB … I‘ve got a 256GB whopper now, full to the brim with photos that I can’t bring myself to look at and songs that I can’t bring myself to listen to.
Certain songs just really get to me. I can’t explain it. I hear the first few beats and instantly know what it is, and why it’s so important to me. Goosebumps rip through my body, making all of the hair on my arms stand on edge. Memories flash through my head, a thousand different snapshots of time at once, all in the first few seconds of a song’s intro. Before any words, before the beat even kicks in, it’s there, pulling and tugging at every forced-away memory.
I’m trying to face my demons right now. I’m deleting songs. Deleting playlists. I need your help though. I’m forcing myself to listen to songs that emotionally cripple me, writing out the emotions they bring out, exorcising those demons. It’s soul-destroying. It’s like a flicker book of every bad mistake I ever made. Every ‘bad guy’ I fell for.
I hate you, I love you, I hate that I love you, I don’t want to, but I can’t put nobody else above you.
This entire song reminds me of him. Brown Eyes. Gnash – I hate u, I love u feat. Olivia O’Brien. It was released at about the same time that we were going through our make-up/break-up business, and it just seems to fit.
You ever wonder what we could have been?
You said you wouldn’t and you fucking did
Lie to me, lie with me, get your fucking fix
Now all my drinks and all my feelings are fucking mixed
Always missing people that I shouldn’t be missing
Sometimes you gotta burn some bridges just to create some distance
I have no regrets as far as that man is concerned, but I often wonder what happens to someone to make them act that way. To go from 0 to 100 on the anger-factor, with seemingly no trigger … I mean, I know everyone has their own little triggers, but it’s not normal to have that many of them, surely? What must a man go through to make him end up that bitter and twisted? And, if he were ever to get professional help, would he be a better person? Not that I’d ever want to know, I’m glad that man is out of my life now. I’m not sure what would have happened, had we stayed together, but I do know that nothing good would have come of it.
Those songs that remind me of him? They’re tinged with a lot of things. I remember the good things, yes, like the sex and the sensuality of it all, but I also remember the bad things. I remember the man who pushed me into a corner of his kitchen and had sex with me even though I told him I didn’t want to. Even though I had tears streaming down my face and I was batting his hand away. Even though I was trying to pull my jeans up as he was tearing them down.
The Brown Eyes chapter is one I just left in limbo. I didn’t exorcise him as I did with all the others. I didn’t have the big throw-out fury, where I get rid of everything that ever reminded me of him. I didn’t do any of that. I just accepted that he was a dickhead, blocked him, wrote about him a bit, and then moved on. I’m not saying that I need to do anything in order to get over him, because that ship has most definitely sailed, but all of those videos, photos and songs? They’ve gotta go. It’s about time that I faced them, tackled them head-on.
I don’t want a model. I don’t want a movie star. You don’t have to win the lotto. I want you to win my heart.
I remember the first time he sent me that song. Miguel – Simple Things. I fell in love with it immediately. Somehow, it just managed to sum up everything we thought we felt for each other. Someone real, someone true. Someone to smoke with, lay with, laugh with. It was everything I wanted from my relationship. I wanted someone who just got me. I thought that was him, I really did. I know what we had was brief, but it really was something. That man ignited things in me I hadn’t realised was still there. Rebellion. Fun. Laughter. The kinda relationship depicted in a Rihanna music video. A bit like ‘We Found Love’, which is another of those songs that really get to me.
She said I just want someone true. She said I just want someone to smoke with me, babe. And lay with me, babe. Laugh with me, babe. I just want the simple things. Smoke with me babe. Laugh with me, baby. Lay with me, babe. I just want the simple things. I just want you.
I’m so disappointed with the whole business. Him. It. The whole thing.
I’m disappointed that I fell for that bullshit more than anything else, but I’m disappointed that he turned into another one of those men too. You know — men who belong on the DNR pile with a big sign stuck to their back warning other women of their craziness. I had such high hopes for him. That’s something I don’t think I ever really spoke about on here, but he had such big plans. Plans that I actually thought might go somewhere. He seemed to have his head screwed on for someone so fucked over. I looked up to him. Worse than that, I actually respected him. It takes a really big man to pick himself up from the bottom of the bottle and work his way back up the ladder again. He really won me over. I still don’t know how I managed to get so blindsided by him, but it scares me. What happens if I get caught off-guard like that again? How could I have been so stupid as to ignore all the big red warning flags? I read back over the blogs I wrote, too … they were all there, glaringly bright, those big red warning signs. You lot were all telling me to steer well clear, so fuck knows what I was playing at. I was so adamant that he wasn’t like you all kept telling me. How could I have gotten things so wrong?
Let that cell phone ring, let that bluebird sing, let that message say unread
Let them talk about us, let them talk too much
While we rule the whole world from our bed
Overload by John Legend and Miguel. I must have listened to this song a hundred times during my Brown Eyes break up, for no reason other than it just reminded me of him. I still wrack my brains over what happened there, you know. I blame a lot of it on the sex. Great sex. This song is the kinda song we woulda fucked to, and it would have been real soulful, 90’s R&B fucking too. Slow, sensual, candles burning and cheesy saxophone-infused music playing in the background. Stoned sex usually, because between us, we smoked enough to shock Snoop Dogg. Stoned sex is the best sex. Nothing beats a real emotional connection, but throw a couple of stoners into the mix and I swear it’ll be the best sex you ever have.
Not that I’m condoning drug use, obviously.
Don’t do drugs, kids.
His moves would always flow in time with the music, slow and soft when the rhythm was just that, picking up the pace when the beat did. The weed-induced haze just made things feel so much better, almost like it was in slow-motion and each touch could be appreciated in all its glory. The build-up was always incredible. I didn’t ever want it to end. My orgasm wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel; the entire tunnel was the most beautiful ride, lit up the entire way. It was honestly like the kind of sex you’d see in a movie. Perfect sex. Sex that you dream about. It doesn’t come with anything real, of course, but it sure was nice while it lasted.
He was great in bed. I’ll give him that.
That playlist … It continues. It doesn’t have a name. It just has five red love hearts in the title. I’m sure I meant those at the time. It should have five broken heart emojis now, not love hearts. If you press play and listen to the entire thing from song one to the end, you have a timeline of every breakup I ever had. Every person that broke my heart. Every emotion I felt. That’s what happens when you emotionally hoard on a TV program-worthy level.
It’s time to spring clean. To be continued …
You can read the entire Brown Eyes saga from start to finish here.
wooooooooooooooow thanks for sharing