Two songs of my day

When I woke up today, I was criticised again for sleeping too late and apparently not trying hard enough to get back on my feet, and wrote the guy who agreed to support both if us in this arrangement a long email. I reached out to the mutual friend who agreed to support both me and my host if we have any problems. He was really grateful for my honest communication and we were planning to talk on Thursday anyway; he asked if he might forward the message to the friend we will be meeting with… and it is good to get that off my chest to an understanding soul.

I hope he will understand how hard it is to keep ‘normal’ hours when you’re me, especially when I have huge emotional loads to process in my life; it keeps me from turning into a stress ball and going insane. Then the expectation to go out and just look for any job I can find, no matter what it is, especially when I have a really sore shoulder that I am afraid of making worse (though I didn’t say that)… having to interact with people I don’t know, probably getting criticised and bossed around… and having to interview and probably getting rejected again and again because my soul and my integrity isn’t really in it, I have to do whatever it takes to keep myself from getting more depressed, and it is hard to feel like an artist or a dreamer in days of such struggle where there doesn’t seem to be anyone around who can understand me and appreciate me. I am even afraid of being told that going back to Latin America is a bad idea. I feel misunderstood and I don’t really know what it takes if anything to start feeling held by something or someone. I wonder what the point is, why I keep trying, what I am doing wrong to feel so fearful and so disconnected from whatever might sooth and bring peace to my heart.

Maybe I will start looking for songs that I especially resonate with; they have been coming to me all on their own, too. Sometimes only through a song can I know how my heart really feels, though I don’t know what to do anymore at the point that I resonate: what action do I take on the feelings? Is there anything to be done once I have a clearer idea how I am feeling or do I just sit with it and try to feel eternally patient? The trouble with pop music is often it makes me feel immediately good, sometimes it feels like all I need is friends to dance with and sing karaoke with or jam on the guitar with and I will be sooo much less lonely. But the trouble with pop music is it is like a habitual feel good response and there can be an extreme optimism to a lot of these songs that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. It does not necessarily reflect the state of my life. It creates endorphins or oxytocin or dooamine or something and maybe it fools me into feeling like, hey, I feel pretty good and optimistic right now, but when the dopamine wears off, I am left with what is, which is feeling sad and all alone. I don’t want to use music to avoid what is…

There are two songs on my mind that reflect how I feel right now (and figuring out how I feel feels kind of impossible). One is How Far We’ve Come by Matchbox Twenty. Oh, the lyrics aren’t particularly optimistic, which might be part of why I relate to them, but the musical energy of a lot of not so optimistic song lyrics can be motivating nonetheless. It is kind of paradoxical because what does it matter how far you’ve come when it all seems to be coming to an end? It is a narrative of what my days feel like lately sometimes. There is an image of cars moving at half a mile an hour and “I believe the world is burning to the ground,” maybe from climate change or something or other, and for some reason I am just so pessimistic and scared about the future, unless something like an extraterrestrial civilisation comes along and shows us a better way to live. Then the line: “Can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time?” That line gets to me.

The other song is The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson. I think it is still the song I would love for someone to sing about me from the soul. It takes me more than just about any other it seems to what romance feels like in the core if my soul. When I don’t feel safe, don’t have anywhere to rest when I stop running, and feel like I am going to fall fall fall without being noticed nevermind caught, this song is so simple and makes me feel the possibility of being caught, held, seen, gotten by somebody, while everybody else just tries to put you in boxes that don’t fit. I never thought of ‘thoughtful gestures’ as my love language but if thoughtful gestures are anything like this song, they must be… I feel so connected to someone who would sing these lines to me, or find a way to convince me that it is okay to just be myself and I am loved.

It takes so little in a way to really feel supported, and yet when the song is not playing that possibility feels ever so far away again. It played last night, when I needed to feel the possibility that someone out there might take me the way I am. I suppose that is my highest wish for any friendship or romantic connection. Love as taking me as I am. These days I am so out of sorts I do not know what the way I am is, and maybe it’s not helpful but I am a sucker for love stories and for dreaming about love. If there is even the possibility that someone might see through my messiness and my failures and my endless fear and running around in circles and my quirkiness and strangeness and difference, that the kind if caring this song expresses is possible, that gives me faith in my future, somehow. Though I don’t know how foolish it is to be even that optimistic. “Cause I love the way you say good morning” is such a beautiful line and it sort if implies spending the night with someone who makes you feel loved and being grateful to spend another day with them. When I can imagine someone saying good morning to me like that, whether they are a friend or a lover, I don’t feel quite so alone. And I just don’t want to ever think that true love is dead. That idea reminds me of a horrible experience I had, and it hurts. I am a sucker for love. Should I change? Is my hope in love counterproductive? If I ask the world that question I will probably get billions of different answers. These voices say, “Just be alone,” stop daring to hope, but I don’t know what voices to listen to, and just being alone is working less well than it ever has before. What if there were someone who’d just love to cuddle up with me all night? Someone who’d be grateful to just spend extended quality time with me like lovers do? Someone who could make me feel loved in all my messiness and my weirdness? It would change my perspective on everything…

I feel connected though to people who believe deeply in love or have been deeply heartbroken. I wish it were easier to find people to be like, let’s be heartbroken together. I feel like reifying my gothic aesthetic and emotional millieu and everything. It holds what is going on with me: not just sadness, but a sadness yearning to be related and shared with others, a gothic sadness. I am maybe more into gothic sadness than gothic horror because when I think about horror right now I get tooo terrified like thise things coukd happen to me.

I want to wear my gothic heart on my sleeve, how else do I have a chance that someone out there might find me? It is not so much about them, but the more I can show, I am unique, and relax into who I am, the more likely I am to find folks who get me. I think maybe it was a mistake to cut my hair and take my piercings out because now everybody expects me to be normal! I want to do something to express my affinity for… whatever the gothic is… and feel grounded and at home in some kind of identity paradoxically because the more I think of ‘gothic’ as an identity the less it seems to work. It is a subtle descriptor of the soul but I feel most at home when these parts of me
can be most at home. Maybe Celene Jimenez said it best speaking to HipLatina: “The music and culture embody this acceptance of death and defiance of darkness—once you take it as your banner you are empowered because it is no longer a prison.” When I hold this banner, so to speak, my sadness feels less like a prison, too, and I come to feel at home in it. In the presence of a kindred spirit it can feel really connecting and beautiful.

In any case somehow doing that even on my own helps me figure out what I am feeling and feel it and be gentle with it. There is hope in the possibility that others will not judge my sadness or despair but will let it be and maybe it can be in a way beautiful. I am open to meeting whoever I meet and though the gothic can be a subtle thing I want to find a way to express: this is who I am; I don’t care about social convention, status, fitting in and being like everyone else; in fact that is kind of the last thing I want, and it is relaxing when people can be like, oooh you are so weird, I like you. Too often weirdness has been a bad thing. I like when people appreciate my uniqueness, not my difference. I don’t think I care too much about gothic subculture or anything, so I am unlikely to meet anyone by going to events, but there is something deep in me that wants expression, something that brings a sense of romance and beauty to the parts of life that are hardest to bear, and I immediately relax when finally I am with someone where there are no taboos to… not having a lit if money, just being a romantic, just being an artist, just being sad, just being a traveler through life.

Oh, I met a sort of really sweet goth friend at the shelter, whose name happened to be Unique; she was so helpful, caring; her presence was so relaxing; conversation was more natural than with most people I meet which is often the case when I meet people who somehow present themselves as, well, unique. I hope she found a place, she left too soon. She was only there for about a week. I hope she found a good place to be. She was evicted and she had to give up her cat. 🙁 She felt like a friend, the only one I met there who truly relaxed me to have her around, like, having you around makes it okay and easier to get through the night knowing you’re here too and I’ll get through another day. Like there was even one other like me, who had challenges similar to mine, anxieties and issues similar to mine, and we could just talk about real things and respect and care about each other’s experiences… and her asathetic and presentation had nothing really to do with it, except I often notice those things often go together. Her style fit her personality. And maybe I feel inspired to find the courage to be a little more brave about being different… being unique. I’m trying to find a way to express this better… and figuring out ways to feel more comfortable being myself.

I think maybe I could make it a goal to go on practice dates with friends? I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone would want to, but that sounds fun and no pressure way to get to know people, to get to know friends better, doing something intentional and meaningful together. and who knows what could happen besides? Agreeing to go on a practice date sounds less intimidating than a real date and maybe someone who really liked me would agree to that wheras they’d be too nervous for an actual date. Maybe I could get to know friends in new and interesting ways. I just enjoy sharing experiences and good times with people. I write all the time; I try to reveal things about myself that are real, but I doubt I have much readership, and I doubt that, doing what I’m doing right now, I will find someone to connect to who might be like: I like you, I want to invest in getting to know you a lot better! And waking up in the morning after snuggling with someone who really likes you and feels safe with you, and hearing them say good morning in that adorable way, is the sweetest thing.