This might be another weird one folks so fair warning. I’ve been listening to one of my newest favorite playlists. It was one made for me, by someone I’m already caring a whole lot about, so of course it’s going to hold a special place in my heart. And one song in particular spoke to me and I guess I want to take some time and talk about why I think why and why those feelings ultimately don’t matter. They do matter, in the sense that I am feeling a certain way and I need to acknowledge and allow myself to feel that, but on the other hand the reason for it is isn’t one that’s realistic and if I give those thoughts too much power I will let myself get stuck in that funk. Well normally it’d take me into at least the third paragraph until something happens that makes this post irrelevant, but this time I barely got into the third sentence before I realized that I was definitely reading too into this song and song’s lyrics. Clairo’s bubble gum makes me feel a lot of things and especially knowing it was someone I cared about who added the song I had this little alarm going off in my brain saying that the lyrics and meaning of the song is something they’re trying to communicate. I know that sounds dumb, maybe a bit childish (if I am allowing myself to use judgmental terms which I probably shouldn’t be) but that is how I used to communicate and how I understood how some people were feeling. It’s not something I do as often anymore, but when the songs I love and often want to express/show to someone I care about is because I either related to the mood of the song or specifically the lyrics.

My interpretation of these lyrics are that Clairo feels strong feelings towards someone they don’t exactly know how they feel towards them. They know that they would do anything for this person but they doubt that this person would do the same. The song mostly is about unrequited feelings, crushes, and love but I guess my own interpretation took hold. And I started to think why might they communicate a song like this and well do I agree. If they would do anything for me, would I do the same? I’d sure as hell try, but I think my lack of mostly good experiences in relationships reminded me hey as much as you’d want to help and be there for them for everything because this person has done nothing but make you happy and feel safe and you want to do nothing but the same for them… admittedly I’m winging it most of the time. I’d want to do anything for them, but I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if it will be good enough. If I will be good enough. The problem with spending time with someone who you feel deserves nothing but the best, you feel guilty for every time they spend with you because I definitely don’t feel like the best. And it was a dichotomy I felt when I worried that these are the thoughts being communicated, that they know they deserve better are unsatisfied with me and I don’t know, my communication skills? My ability to help out in a crisis? All I “knew” (my BPD tends to make me take emotions and feelings as fact so that’s how it feels) was they worried I wasn’t good enough and what had they gotten themselves into.

There was no evidence to support any of that. All of this stemmed from the mood and lyrics of a song to a playlist and even the fact that the playlist existed proved I was reaching. They made it because they wanted to show me the songs they loved and felt I was special enough to make a playlist just for me. That’s the reason I made my playlist for them, it’s a less nerve wrecking experience of letting someone get to know you. Like hey here are all the songs I love and related to at some point in my life. I also ended up talking about this song with them and that immediately killed all previous assumptions and fears I was having. It’s their favorite song, of Clairo’s at least, and even just knowing that made me go “Oh maybe that’s why they added it. Because they like the song? Not because of all that other shit.” And I think since I was already attaching these strong associations with it I was already starting to love it too and now knowing it’s one of my favorite persons’ favorite song also helped make it one of my faves too. It was a song I was using to help alleviate some anxiety before a group call I had to do, which I ended up making way more worse because I made the poor decision to smoke weed beforehand hoping that slowing my thought process would lessen the anxiety from spiking. Which worked until I had to start the group video call still feeling high off my ass, even worse than usual because that adrenaline from the anxiety mixes with my high and makes the effect so much worse. I was freaking out for a good 15-20 minutes trying to hide my high until I saw a portion of a few messages in my notification bar. It was from this person saying they knew I wasn’t feeling too well and hoped that their little gift for me might help. Even a “hey I’m thinking of you” message might have been enough to help distract me but they went out of their way to basically serenade me and sing this song and don’t even get me started on just how good their singing voice. Ridiculous. Anyway my heart melted and all my paranoid anxiety disappeared, along with any of the other ridiculous fears this song initially sparked. This song was now certainly my favorite and even listening to it now, while it still is a very somber sounding song.. it brings nothing but comfort to me. Especially since it’s not Clairo’s voice I hear in my head anymore.

I feel embarrassed that my head even went to those places, with nothing to go off of. Just thinking with all pure emotion and that’s not something I normally like doing, it’s a part of the symptoms of my borderline personality. To make these interpretations to understand what is usually just a strong emotional response to whatever. This time it was a song, and I suppose it’s okay to say a song made me sad. There doesn’t have to be a reason why and it especially doesn’t need to be a statement or comment someone is trying to make about me or our friendship/relationship. I will say though the fact that I was going to write this post already with the added, “This is only something I feel. I don’t believe it to be actually true” disclaimer before events happened that actually helped 100% confirm it wasn’t true. This is what practicing mindful thinking looks like I suppose, allowing myself to think about what I felt, why I thought I felt it, and deciding to do something different. A few years ago if I felt the same way I would’ve reacted, I would’ve filled my playlist with 3-4 sad somber songs that I wanted to communicate I was feeling hurt with. Thankfully we’re past this point and all we’ve got instead is a reflective post saying “oh huh yeah I felt this way” and hopefully that’s it. Also it wasn’t the intent on mentioning the song, but doing so helped squash all those false assumptions I had and I suppose talking about things generally that I started to gather these heavily biased associations usually help get rid of those too. So I suppose I should try that more often now too.

-T.