significance

this past week, i was hospitalized for depression. i didn't have access to a phone or computer, which meant no music.

my life that week was bland.

i didn't feel as depressed, but i never felt happy, either. i never felt inspired by anything, never felt that indescribable twisting sensation in my chest that music brings on.

i felt empty.

music is never something i want to take for granted.

music is like a life-saving medication for me.

without music, i feel like a flightless bird (tøp reference intended.)

music means something to me.

as i sit at my kitchen table, writing as an assignment from my intensive outpatient program, and listening to johnny boy, i wonder why music can affect me in this way, and yet, for my brother, it's simply a distraction. a hobby.

he thinks in lines, logical patterns, building blocks like the legos he's been playing with since he was 3. he likes order. craves structure and predictability. thrives under it.

i think in webs, complicated thought-relationships that make sense to no one else. i don't think in pictures, or in words, or in logical structure. i think in sound. i remember everything i've ever heard in the exact voice i heard it said in. i connect people, not with their face or name, but with their voice. scary pictures or words never bothered my anxious mind as much as scary sounds--horrified screams, haunting chords, monstrous roars, and hissing voices.

when i was younger, and i would see a poster for a scary movie in a store, it never bothered me as much as hearing someone talking about a scary movie. i can read about medival tortures and unexplained mysteries, but once i hear them discussed out loud, they become more unnerving to me.

which is why music imapcts me so much. it's one thing to see words written on a page, describing how a person feels, but it's another thing entirely for me to hear someone say it out loud.

for them to sing it.

the same way reading a poem relaxes my aspiring-novelist mom, or designing a perfectly geometrical building in minecraft calms my brother with dreams of being an architect, music makes me feel more complete. it touches me.

i feel a pang in my chest, a wonderfully terrible, horribly euphoric, paradoxical twisting that is like my drug.

it makes everything make sense to me.

i can think more clearly when i have my headphones on, the music echoing through my ears, saturating my bloodstream, breifly calming my anxious, depressive brain.

it's something beautiful and terrible, hot and cold, soft and sharp.

it is significance.

lovely

so i didn't know there was a remastered version of lovely until my friend played it for me and i was like, "what, no, this isn't the right song" and it was stressing me out so much.

anyway, i just wanted to write a post about my favorite tøp song.

i always felt like nobody understood, nobody really cared. you get up all this courage to tell someone "hate myself and i want to die" and all that jazz and they just respond with, "awwWWW but you're beautiful don't be sad ;("

if it was as easy as suddenly realizing that i was beautiful and could "just get over" this, i would have done it a long time ago.

people who haven't gone through it don't realize how ingrained all these beliefs and pain are. i didn't just wake up one day thinking i was ugly and worthless. it's taken a long time to get this low, and it will take a long time to get back up. these flies and cobwebs are deep inside. it doesn't just take one person telling me how beautiful i am. i need convincing.

which is where this song comes in.

i will make you believe you are lovely.

"make you believe."

tyler isn't satisfied with a simple "you're beautiful don't do this." he's willing to work for it. 

i never had anybody like that.

the first time i heard this song, i cried and cried. nobody had ever taken the time to convince me of my worth. nobody had cared that much before.

so, if you're reading this, i want to be that person for you. i want to be the person that you never had, that i never had, that tyler has been for me.

you are lovely as heck, and i won't stop saying it until you believe it. i know it sucks. gosh, it sucks so much. it hurts. sometimes it feels like there's no way out. i had a night like that last night. but it gets better. this won't hold you down forever. please don't let it. you are frigging lovely, beautiful, perfect in every way, and i want to make you believe it. in whatever way necessary.

the best entrance i ever made

i was at my friend's house at a party, hiding by the upstairs staircase with 3-4 other people. my friend pointed to picture on the wall of a girl reading a book and commented that she "looked so done." another friend asked, "done as in finished or done as in well-cooked?" i took this opportunity to scream "JOSH DUN" and run down the stairs.