Currently Playing.

There's a predominant section on the homepage of this website called Currently Playing. Music has always been my therapy. I find a song, hear someone else put words around whatever giant fucking thing is sitting in my chest and it becomes a sigh of relief… because someone, somewhere, gets it.

My Currently Playing for the last nine days has been about the love I shared with her. In fact, so has every single post I have made in the last 9 days. A memoir to my heartbreak, I guess. As a reminder, here is the playlist that I am retiring from my homepage.

Today… I decided to change it.

Actually, I decided to gut the entire goddamn thing. And here’s why…

Looking at it now, I realize just how much of that playlist was about belonging to her. It was about being chosen. Finding your person. Promising permanence. And being utterly terrified of losing it. It was a playlist that speaks to the core of who I have been my entire life… the belief that maybe, just maybe, big, ridiculous, inconvenient, life-altering love would somehow be enough to overcome everything that stands in it’s way.

That was where I was. But I'm not there anymore. And not because I suddenly stopped loving someone. Jesus Christ, if only grief worked that efficiently… The reality is, nine days ago, I couldn’t shower. Yesterday I wrote about driving around our town looking for red Teslas like a fucking lunatic. Today my stomach still drops when I see one. So no… that doesn’t just disappear in a 24 hour time span.

This also isn’t some big proclamation where I announce that I am suddenly HEALED!!! 🙌 🙄 

Trust me… I am so far from that. So so so so far from that. But I’d be lying if I said something in me hasn’t changed… because it has. 

For the last week, everything I’ve written here has been written to her. Even when nobody else was reading, I was talking to her. Every paragraph represented another conversation I wasn’t allowed to have with her. Every post was another letter shoved through an imaginary crack under a door she chose to close.

I know why I did it. Writing to her made me feel like I still had my friend. And if I kept talking to her, I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. I wouldn’t have to admit that this thing was over. But then I said something out loud yesterday that has settled in my soul over the last 24 hours.

I got dumped.

God, I fucking hate that sentence. How old am I? It sounds so small and ordinary for something that was anything but. But here it is, as true as true can be. I got dumped.

And today, as I went about my day doing the things I would do as if I haven’t been walking around like a zombie for a week, I realized something very important. 

My blog can not just be a bunch of letters to someone who isn’t even reading them. Jesus… She’s not even here! Additionally, I don’t want them to be!!! This blog is for ME. It’s for me processing the things happening in my life. And while I have given her my time within my space, I don’t want this to turn into a mailbox. So I'm taking it back.

Which brings me back to the new playlist.

This one starts basically in the same place my heart still exists… 

“The Feel Again (Stay)” by Blue October: Because for sure, there is a small part of me that is still sitting here, internally begging, bargaining, and screaming “Please. STAY.” When you love someone… truly love someone, that part never leaves. It just slowly gets quieter, but is always present.

“You Were Mine” by Forest Blakk: This is the epitome of what my brain still can’t fucking understand.  She was mine… I was hers… There was an “us”... But now there isn’t. What do I do with that?

“Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi: A song that will truly trigger her should she ever come to this blog before its retirement… This one is because the hardest parts of losing someone isn’t just missing them… It’s waking up every day, every single fucking day, and realizing that they are actively choosing to love someone else. 

“All I See Is You” by Blue October: This one is on the list because apparently every fucking  red Tesla in Williamson County has been deployed specifically to test my emotional stability. Seriously. There are too many. But that’s grief, huh? Someone can disappear completely from your actual life, and still somehow become more present than they ever had been before.

“The Night We Met” by Lord Huron: This one makes the list because there have absolutely been moments this week when I have wondered whether I would go back and undo it all, if I could. If I would save myself from this. If I would never cross that line. Never hear her words. Never know what her kiss felt like. Never allow myself to believe in a fictional future on a houseboat  in Santa Barbara… 

“I Found” by Amber Run: Answers the question that Lord Huron made me ask… And that answer is no. I wouldn’t undo any of it. That’s the really fucked up part. Because however this ends… whatever comes from all of this… I found something. I found a version of myself I didn’t know existed. I found out what it felt like to believe someone when they told me I was beautiful. (Holy shit… I didn’t even know that was possible!) I found out what it felt like to have someone be fascinated by the parts of me I’ve spent my entire life apologizing for. I found out what it felt like to be chosen… loudly. And most importantly, I found out that I am capable of loving someone without holding back anything. Without molding myself to someone else. And that has to mean something, even if I don’t get to keep the person who taught me it. 

“Liar” by MICHA: In case it’s not completely obvious as to why this makes the list, let me spell it out for you.  I’m still angry. I’m still confused. And there are moments when my brain asks whether any of this was actually real. There are moments where I feel completely “played”. And there are moments when I want answers that I’m beginning to accept… I may never receive.

“You Don’t Love Me” by Isaac Levi: This title hurts. I’m not even sure that I believe it… but maybe that’s not even the point? Because I’ve spent more than a week asking myself what SHE feels. Does SHE still  love me? Does SHE miss me? Is SHE even thinking about me? Is she devastated too? Is she staying away because she has to? Is she waiting? Is she scared? Will she come back? And you know what? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW. I have no way of knowing.

What I do know is what she’s doing… And that is… Nothing. And that’s where the sentence I’ve been fighting finally comes in. If she wanted to… she would. She knows where I am. She knows how to reach me. She knows me well enough to know exactly what her silence is doing to me. And still.. Nothing.

And you know what? I don’t have to decide that her lack of contact means she never loved me. I don’t have to rewrite every beautiful thing that happened between us into a lie, just because I don’t understand the ending.  I hold space for two things to be true. She loved me. And she is choosing not to be in my life. I can hate the second truth without destroying the first one. 

“Almost Lover” by A Fine Frenzy: Y’ALL. THAT. TITLE. Because that’s exactly what this ultimately became. “Almost” Almost a different life. Almost a different future. Almost enough time. Almost… 

“My Never” by Blue October: Just like he always does, Justin Furstenfeld puts words to the thing I’m struggling hardest to learn. Someone can be the person you would choose… and still be someone you don’t get to have. Love doesn’t create entitlement. It doesn’t guarantee access. And it doesn’t obligate her to choose a life with me, just because I want her too. I fucking hate that. But I’m beginning to understand that accepting this doesn’t require me to stop loving what was… 

“Gravity” by Sara Bareilles: Another somewhat triggering song for her… I think she liked this song because it reminded her of someone else. She listened to it all of the time. In fact, that’s how I know this song even exists. But it stays because eventually I have to stop orbiting her. I can’t spend my days wondering where she is, or look inside every red Tesla for her eyes. I can’t interpret every blocked account, every Venmo transaction, every website visit (or lack there of) as a fucking message from the universe. I can’t keep looking for tiny loopholes that allow me to postpone accepting the enormous thing sitting directly in front of me. She. Is. Not. Here. But I am.

“Liability” by Lorde. This one holds a special place on the list because it’s the most dangerous part of who I am… When someone leaves, the rhetoric on loop inside my twisted mind becomes… “See? You were too much. You loved too hard. You needed too much. You should have been quieter. Less emotional. Less complicated.  Less… Stef. 

No.

I’m not doing that this time. Maybe I am a lot. Actually… scratch that. I AM a fucking lot. I love loudly. I feel everything at an eleven. I overthink. I catastrophize. I write novels when normal people send three sentences. I require reassurance. I ask questions. I want to understand EVERYTHING.  And there ARE things about myself that I need to work on. That’s why I have a therapist… But I am done interpreting someone else’s inability… or unwillingness… as proof that I should have been smaller. 

“Boston” by Augustana: An acknowledgement of sorts… an acknowledgement that there is still a part of my grief that just wants to fucking disappear. Go somewhere nobody knows the story. Somewhere where red Teslas don’t roam the streets carrying ghosts. Somewhere where I don’t know which restaurants hold memories or which parking lots contain entire chapters of my life. 

But I don’t need Boston… What I need is to build a life right here that doesn’t revolve around waiting for someone else to return to it.

And that my dear reader… brings me to my last and final song… 

“I’ll Do Me, You Do You” by who? None other than Blue October… because that man understands my soul in ways I’ve never experienced. “I’ll Do Me, You Do You” is where I write you from. 

I am not healed.

I am not “over it”. 

I am not pretending I don’t still desperately wish this ending was different. 

I’m just… done chasing. She knows where I am. She knows how I feel. And there are no combinations of words that can suddenly make her choose me. There isn’t a phone number that she might respond to. There isn’t another message that will somehow say something I haven’t already said. 

There isn't another perfect combination of words I can arrange that will suddenly make someone choose me. No loophole exists.

The ball isn’t in my court anymore. Maybe someday she’ll pick it up… but maybe she won’t. Either way, I’m done standing on the court waiting. 

For eight days, I’ve been writing to her. And now, that's over because today, I write to ME. This blog isn’t a mailbox anymore. It’s mine.

So is that playlist…

... and whatever comes next.