What does it look like not to live in past stories we’ve told ourselves?
Or others have told us?
I was listening to some songs on my drive today from middle school.
And as much as someone loves to deeply release their emotions through song (hello positive psychology) my mind couldn’t help but think: there’s no way these lyrics that have rung in my ears from such a young age could NOT have an effect on me.
I sang along to the rhymes of “Steal My Girl” by supernova boy band One Direction and found the song comforting; then disturbing. My now adult-educated brain noticed the echoes of a codependent narrative traced throughout the song:
Everybody wanna take her heart away
Couple billion in the whole wide world
Find another one 'cause she belongs to me.
Belongs?
Who belongs to who?
As a 13 year-old, hormones running wild, I most definitely idolized whatever these older, unbeknownst to me boys would sing to me through my iPod headphones.
My mind correlated: Desired by many = Worthy of praise
Worthy of praise = loved by the elite
I actually ended up dating my very first crush. He was older than me. More popular, more sought after. When I was young, from afar, my subconscious mind believed, “if I could get someone desired by so many to pick me,
then and only then,
will I be worthy of love.”
Turns out his love didn’t water my garden at 11 years old just like he didn’t at 23.
Since then, I have dissected and mended my view of what I want a relationship to be. I’ve learned about my attachment style and decided to befriend it. Through therapy, family relationships and failures (though, what a failure is to me now isn’t what it was to me then) I can say that at twenty-six, what I thought I wanted… I never really did at all.
No one needs to ache for anyone to the point where they think they are dying.
No one needs to chase after someone and abandon themselves.
Romeo and Juliet died in the end.
Let’s not forget.
I also noted another artist’s lyrics I used to dissect as if they were Shakespearian.
I didn’t realize it until I began playing her 2013 album Demi, that Demi Lovato has struggled with mental illness openly for a very long time. It was encouraging to hear a star speak of their ailments so candidly as someone who also battled with their mind from a very young age…
But these ailments are not something I want to identify with anymore.
In fact, they are something I have worked, cried, and prayed away for the past 12 years; in therapists’ offices and church sanctuary floors.
At a stop light, I pulled up the Spotify feature of “song credits”. I scrolled through the names of the men who wrote her songs. Ones she was singing out of her mouth but I’m not sure she wrote with her hands. A swirl began from my chest to my head as I realized:
Older white men, making more money in royalties than I’ll probably ever see, wrote the narratives of my life embedded in my subconscious; ones that have caused me damage and more therapy bills than I wish my parents had to pay for.
All because no one, up to this point in our cultural moment, was willing to put a pin in Pop.
Re-write the catchy melodies and lines feeding off of the fragile little brains of young girls (boys, too.)
It’s not fair.
You become what you think about,
Who you are around,
What you believe (and don’t believe) about people and love.
This epidemic of codependency and righteousness has been ringing in all of our heads since pop music found its way into our iPod nanos.
I don’t want to identify with,
'Cause I don't wanna fall in love
If I ever did that, I think I'd have a heart attack
[Demi’s Top 40 hit song “Heart Attack”]
I want to fall in love.
I want to do it right.