listening lately:

Emily I'm Sorry/boygenius

She's asleep in the backseat
Looking peaceful enough to me
But she's waking up inside a dream
Full of screeching tires and fire
We're coming back from where no one lives
Pretty much just veterans
When I pointed out where the North Star is
She called me a fucking liar

Emily, I'm sorry I just
Make it up as I go along
And I can feel myself becoming
Someone only you could want

Headed straight for the concrete
In a nightmare, screaming
Now I'm wide awake, spiraling
And you don't want to talk
Just take me back to Montreal
I'll get a real job, you'll go back to school
We can burn out in the freezing cold
And just get lost

Emily, I'm sorry, baby
You know how I get when I'm wrong
And I can feel myself becoming
Somebody I'm not, I'm not, so
Emily, forgive me, can we
Make it up as we go along?
I'm twenty-seven and I don't know who I am
But I know what I want

Emily, I'm sorry
Emily, I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Favor/Julien Baker

We took the forty down to
Visit the family, and I
Told you, the only kin I knew
Was who I could see from the gurney
I used to think about myself
Like I was a talented liar
Turns out that all my friends were
Trying to do me a favor

I always want to tell the truth
But it never seems like the right time
To be serious enough
I'm sorry, I'm making myself cry
How long do I have until
I've spent up everyone's goodwill?

Sat on the hood, out all night
Trying to scrape together change
You pulled a moth out from the grill of your truck
Saying "It's a shame"
How come it's so much easier
With anything less than human?
Letting yourself be tender
Well, you couldn't make me do it

It doesn't feel too bad, but it
Doesn't feel too good either
Just like a nicotine patch, it
Hardly works, then it's over

Who put me
In your way to find?
What right had you
Not to let me die?
Ooh, but did I even know
What I was asking for?
If I had my way
I'd have missed you more
Than you missed me
You missed me

You missed me
You missed me

Immune/Jensen McRae

Traffic from the East side got me aggravated
Hotter than the day my brother graduated
Wait for hours in the sun
In line at Dodgers Stadium
I'm not scared of dogs or getting vaccinated

Lay the seat back, turn this place into a bed
Someone's smoking in the Camry just ahead
Yeah, I know the irony
Would never be lost on me
You don't have to point it out
Again

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

Radio is static through the Taylor song
Think a college football game is comin' on
God you hate Top 40 shit
But as the sports preempted it
Your mouth in my ear
You hummed along

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

Think the nurse that gave our shots is judging us
Can she tell that we just fucked the friendship up?
As we leave, I turn to you
Ask how it feels to be immune
And you know what I mean a bit too much

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

What will we say to each other?
What will we be to each other?
Ooh

I'll edit this listen as I continue to listen.

 I've always been emotional.  One definition of the word emotional from Merriam-Webster is "markedly aroused or agitated in feelings or sensibilities".  I think I have always just possessed this ability to feel the emotions of others.  It helps me greatly in my profession: I find that patients and families are often comforted by my presence no matter their backgrounds.  

I think that's why being so off is getting to me.  Like I completely misjudged another person's pain and hurt and I truly believed they cared for me.  I don't think he is capable of that right now.  There were so many signs that I wasn't crazy though, and I suppose I feel a bit gaslit.  Which connects to a deeper web of that old familiar feeling.  

The universe is so vast.  There is someone out there with my same heart, some kind of chimeric twin soul.  Someone who is good, kind, compassionate, loyal, honest, hilarious, silly, and beautiful just like me.  Someone who can make me smile like my sweet Samson, someone who can make my heart sing and my stomach do backflips.  I deserve this.  

I'm 38 and I know what I want.  What I've always wanted.  I want a family of all my own, something beautiful and precious.  I want a family to give my oceans of love to.  That is my joy.

My head is a mess.  I'm thinking of that image of putting a heart in a blender.  I just feel so shredded and naked and exposed.  I also was so ready to just be held by someone.  To be hugged, to hug.  To hold someone else's hand.  I feel so stupid saying that--writing that!--but it is honest.  The second time at that bar I wanted to reach across the table and hold your hand in mine.  When you smile it's everything.  And then I'm like how could that be.  I've never even really dated, marrying my best friend of forever and then dating men from work that knew me already.  And I just met you but I can't shake this feeling that maybe I met the person who I'll spend the rest of my life with.  I've never felt that before so that's why this is even harder.  

He made me so happy.  I haven't felt that happy, that good, in a very long time.  I was excited for the first time in a long time.  I felt alive, like before I was only sleepwalking through a still life.  Yesterday as I was crying I felt so uncomfortable with the feeling I begged to disassociate, to float above myself and watch the girl in the bed crying beneath her and feel nothing.  It's certainly easier to feel nothing, to brick up this pain.  It's also incredibly maladaptive.  

I smoke and listen to bittersweet indie on spotify.  I smoke and the pain in my chest is dulled.  The ache of absence hollow in my heart.

 I'm going on a date. I cried after the shower briefly. The feeling of I might actually be meeting the person that I'll love until the day I die. It overwhelmed my heart. I don't know how to explain how I feel about this man. And while yes I have that fluttering in my chest, it's something deeper than that that feels like it could be the truest connection I've ever known. I also smoked a little. My heart was racing and I felt sick. I think it's just a lot to be feeling so much all at once. 

I do thank God that I feel this joyful. I wish everyone could experience this. 

 I've been good to others. Like my patients and their families. But not my own. Most especially not to myself. 

I’ve wasted loads of my own time. I wouldn’t take any of it back. Mostly because it’s an exercise in stupidity. But I'm spending less time on self loathing and more on self improvement and betterment. Im fucking worth it.

 I like high life better than the real one. VR is better than reality. It hurts less. Bright distractions for a bleak acknowledgement. 

I want the real thing. I want something I've never felt. Real love. I want someone who I think is perfect, who thinks I'm pretty great too. I want amazing sex and passion. I want talking of any topic, I want emotional conversations. Real talk. I want to be fucking consumed. 

I want you to call me. 

 Sometimes I wish I had the choices of college laid before me. Sometimes I wish I was back there, small and ignorant but making love to a man in a plaid shirt with a real record playing behind us. With no cares and no responsibility and the ability to do the broken hearts and hurts the future brings. 

This hole is so deep, God. I feel like I'm forever crawling upward only to fall even further down in it. 

 I'm happy. Right now I don't know what I want but that's okay and I feel excited. Kind of like a little kid. Better than I have in a bit.