The other day, my coworker and I had an Adele jam session. By this I mean we listened to “Someone Like You” on repeat. She loves the song because of its passion. Or something. I’m not really good with emotions. All of this, of course, brought me back to last week, and how a song simultaneously spoke to me and all of you who are like me….
1/10/12, 3:15 AM, Baltimore-Washington Parkway
I’m cruising down the old P-way, which is what we call it in Baltimore (actually that’s not at all true, I have no idea why I just said that). I note the remarkable amount of deer on the side of the highway, veritable throngs of Bambis just munching away on gas soaked grass. “Do you think deer understand emotion?” I thought. “Perhaps, they too are sentient…perhaps they too feel. And what am I, this monster that eats another sentient being? Who am I to cho-“ And that’s when I stopped myself. Nick Saban, you will take a lot of things away from me. You have taken away happiness. You have taken away pride. BUT YOU WILL NEVER. TAKE. AWAY. MY. MEAT (TWSS).
Still shaken from the fact that I almost became a vegetarian, I turn up the radio. Sadness, I’ve found, makes the mind an amazing rationalizing machine. Everything around you will remind you of something that accentuates the hurt. I see a road sign that tells me I’m on the Parkway and automatically remember driving back to Baltimore before that Auburn game where Jarrett Lee threw two clutch touchdown passes and WHY THE HELL DIDN’T HE PLAY THE BOY JUST WANTS A CHANCE TO PLAY SOME BALL LES WHY DIDN’T YOU GIVE HIM A CHANCE IHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOU. I look at a receipt in my cupholder. “Louisiana Fast” it proclaims and I almost vomit. “I vow on everything I own I will never eat Popeyes again,” I thought. Fact: I’m f-cking broke then because I ate Popeyes 3 out of the past 4 days. And so I focus on the song on the radio. Party Rock Anthem. This song oozes energy and despicable happiness. I change the station and hear the pseudo arpeggio of a song I have heard so many times, and thought I understood. I find, however, that now it’s different. The song, THIS song is speaking to my soul parts. “F-ck yeah, girl. Sing me some sh-t,” I quietly whisper to myself. I’ve heard the song many times before, so I was singing along. Actually, less singing, more anguished screaming. And then comes the sweet sword of truth that crams itself into my ear and sears my brain:
“Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”
And half stomp on the breaks. Half (so I guess a quarter?) because I saw two Bambis hanging out in the traffic triangle ON THE INTERSTATE. Guess what you deserve to be eaten stupid deer. And half because of what she said. They say that sometimes your heart skips a beat. That’s actually probably not happening because your heart is actually a really reliable time keeper. Like the best if you think about how much sh-t it has to put up with on the day to day. But I can assure you that my heart did skip a beat. And I thought “This sh-t is real. This is real emotion. She probably wrote this drunk off her ass after she showed up at her ex boyfriends house in a super creepy way. Probably in the rain. Just staring with those dead eyes people sometimes get. Maybe she pointed and said something creepy when he answered the door. Am I reading too muc- HOLY SH-T ANOTHER DEER.”
I turned off the radio. I fiddled with my phone and brought up iTunes and immediately downloaded the song. I needed this and I needed it now because there were still 10 miles to my house and every thought gravitated naturally to the game and every thought then gravitated to me playing “Man in Car vs. Tree.” The tree always wins people. Its simple physics.
So I listened to the song for about 3 repeats and arrived home. I kept it playing as I walked up my steps. I looked at my drink selection. Jim Beam vs. Maccallan 12 year. “This is a time where you spare no expense.” Except for cups since you didn’t want to drink this out of a coffee cup, dumbass (boozing tip: Drink out of a coffee cup for the appearance of work and activity) and since you hadn’t started the old dishwasher, you didn’t have glasses. You are so worthless (other me, sobbing, I KNOW STOP SAYING TRUTH). So I poured the scotch into a mini paper cup, added just the right amount of water and sat on my couch. I couldn’t turn on the TV because it was on ESPN so I sat there for 10 repeats of Someone Like You. I sat there and stared at my cup, rhythmically taking pulls from the paper contraption with every anguished “SOOOOOOOOOMONE LIKE YOOOOOOOOOOOOoooOOOOOOOO.” I had long since put the song on repeat, so it continued to play the soundtrack of my early morning. I looked at my phone. 5:14 AM. I laid on my couch and thought, “God, why have you done this to m-“ BLACKOUT.
I woke, as I have said before 108 repeats later. The only thing that had changed was the wax had begun to run off the cup and was now soggy. Aside from that the room was as much the same as I had left it. Cold, dark, and silent aside from the angst of a broken girl singing to the heart of a broken bro.
God DAMN that is depressing.
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