Feelings about my current music playcounts
I was really upset that I accidentally killed my play count when moving computers and somehow foobar doesn't save data good so a decade of play counts was wiped and I gave up on trying to piece things together via memory and just started counting from the start. I don't remember when that happened, either in 2023 or early this year.
Looking at my top songs now though, I've really noticed a trend towards a softer type of sound. I don't have music terminology but my favorite bands used to be Metric and The Postal Service (/Death Cab for Cutie) and my top song for a long time used to be "Nothing Better" by The Postal Service because I used to listen to that when I was frustrated with my mom and my feelings towards her. Though that song is romantic in intention, these lines:
I feel I must interject here
You're getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself
With these revisions and gaps in history
So let me help you remember
I've made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear
I've prepared a lecture on why I have to leave
and
Don't you feed me lines
About some idealistic future
—were really want I needed at the time. There were many similar Metric lines that really spoke to me, as did the overall impression that Metric had songs about dealing with exploitation. (After Pagans in Vegas they've really somehow gotten worse to being completely trite and whiny, though. Not sure how that happened.) At the time, I figured that these songs could last me my whole life.
Now, though, my top song is "Like a Dream" by Francis and the Lights, which is a song I picked up from the podcast "70 Over 70", which is a bunch of interviews with people over 70 looking back on their life and their feelings about death. It seems like a huge shift from lyrics that specifically talked about how bad things feel sometimes to a more... I don't really want to say nostalgic because the only things I really have to be nostalgic about are some good memories about my dad, but it's always come with the knowledge that he and my mom were failing me and I was an afterthought to them a lot of times. I guess it's more accurate to say that most of my nostalgic memories come with a sadness that doesn't come from the fact that it ended but the fact that it was never the whole truth and I've always been waiting for things to end and to be abandoned again. So I guess the word I would use is "dreamy".
Part of me doesn't like this though, and that is the same part of me that is upset that I gave up on my ideas of suicide because I realized I could never do it, being the coward in supreme I am. That part is upset that I can't take ultimate control of my life and that I now that I'm alive and I have to stay alive I have no choice but to admit that I actually want to be loved. Loved in a way by someone who really sees me and can actually be there for me, and not even in the romantic sense. I long for something to fill the void my parents left me, even though both of them are still alive and I have to continue negotiating my relationships with them for years yet.
Loneliness is a weird thing. For the longest time I didn't care because I thought I had an ultimate solution waiting for me so it didn't matter as long as I could do my "work" (being a student or whatever else). But of course, now that I'm long past that particular finish line and I'm failing to do anything due to social anxiety I end up contemplating it.
Part of me really misses having something that was more important than feeling vulnerable. I don't actually want to want anything from anyone because I don't trust other people. That aspect sucks.
Now I don't know what to do with myself besides trying a new way to fail. And after that, I'll try something else, I guess. I wish I felt safe and that my feelings mattered most for once. I hate feeling that way though. It's like on the off occasion I try to imagine what I would want in a "partner" the answer is a bunch of things that I wish someone would do for me, but I don't want to imagine giving anything back. That bothers me, like I'm just imagining some kind of therapy cat that can also cook and clean. I don't think that's a way to approach intimate relationships. And I'm not even attracted to anyone anyway, so it's the classic "I want to be loved but I don't want to love someone," thing. [And now because I know random people might read this, the disclaimer that I'm aromantic and asexual comes into play.]
If my parents had loved me right I wouldn't need anything else emotionally.
If my parents had loved me right, they wouldn't be my parents.
I don't like wishing for people to be something different than what they are; that feels like an escape from reality. But the self-centered impulse of, "Why couldn't you make it easier for me?" comes into play regardless. Emotions never know how to listen to reason. It hurts, and will continue hurt for a long time.
This is all to say I'm currently listening (and crying to) "Super8" by Tiger del flor, which a friend recommended to me after I mentioned that I liked Ginger Root.
But they say not even the stars last
Forever
Forever
Forever
That's basically how I feel about everything, anyway. And it's just tiring always trying to be ready for things to end and to be abandoned. Regardless, this song and the others have less of a rebellious vibe of raw hurt.
I wanted Nothing Better to be a refuge for the rest of my life. I wanted something to last the closest I could get to forever. But I'm changing. And even if I think it's mostly all right changes, I just wish something could be easy and unchanging sometimes. I wish there was an easy way to be that could be replayed over and over.