day86 - then I'll go and spoil it all by saying something stupid
dear luci,
Fall Out Boy has this one lyric:
“Take your tears, put ‘em on ice.
‘Cause I swear, I’d burn this city down to show you the light.”
it's very teenager-y, as most of their music is. Unabashed in its emotion, almost unapologetically itself, but beneath the surface there's an aching for credibility. An unspoken desire to be taken seriously. “Please, look beyond the form. There's substance behind these words.” But there's also a lot of playfulness. They perform the “we're so hot” attitude, but very tongue-in-cheek because they know they were the nerdiest guys in school.
I've always loved that band. I loved them when I first heard them at 11, and I love them now at 23. I've always loved that lyric, too. I can't over-intellectualise it. I just think it's pretty. And I've loved a handful of people whom I've felt that strongly about.
I grew up feeling very broken. Delivered only by the hopes that someone would find cause to do what I couldn’t:
to love me.
I never understood what people saw in me. Friends, lovers, etc. What was in there that was worthy of love? Was I not obnoxious? Self-centred? They didn’t seem to think so. I’d ask sometimes, receive different answers. Sure, I didn’t feel deserving. But I could never refuse it on that basis. I accepted love like people accepted winning the lottery. Pure, blind luck. Just thank any higher power that may be looking out for me, and move on. Who cares if I was deserving or not. It happened. Might as well enjoy it.
I only realised on the other side of things, as the giver not the receiver, so to speak1 that not everybody is able to turn off their sense of ‘deserving’ so easily. Not everyone believes you, takes you at your word when you say “I love you.”
That tends to come from two main avenues. Fear and guilt. Often both. Sometimes all we want is to be loved, to be cared for, but we can’t help, as irrational as we know it is, to push it away as fervently as we reach for it.
Fear of losing. Of never being enough. Of hurting someone you care about, or letting them down. Fear can create such ugliness, such desperation in us. It can make you paranoid. Distrustful. The fearful mind jumps to conclusions, it hallucinates chains of cause and effect from the barest of details. I’ve felt that desperation before. I’ve done stupid things because of it. But I’ve also been on the other side. I’ve been asked earnestly if I have done horrible things. Things I had told them I would never do, things that would have been utmost violations of their trust, based on nearly no evidence. Because they just needed to hear me say I hadn’t. I always understood where it came from, I was always happy to assuage their anxiety, but it always hurt. That kind of fear makes it hard to trust. And it’s very hard to validate that trust by proving a negative. “No, I won’t do this to you.” “Yeah. Maybe not yet.”
A person can play at dispelling your fears for a while. Eventually you realise that gets caustic. You need to treat the problem from within.
Where was I? Oh. Yeah. Fall Out Boy.
I've grown a lot since the first time I heard that lyric, felt it ring in my soul. In many ways I feel like I'm the kind of person my younger self would be impressed by. That is to say: We're not nearly that different2. But I learnt patience, restraint, some semblance of stability. I learnt to pick my battles, learnt when to fight for something that matters. I've hurt and I've been hurt. We both still love the Ninja Turtles. We love the same bands (albeit my taste has expanded much more), and we're both hopeless romantics.
I hope I grow and change even more throughout my life. But if anything remains constant, I hope I never forget what made the art I loved so special to me. I hope I never lose that fondness. Never grow too cynical.
"And I'll keep singing this line if you'll keep believing it.
Are we growing up? Or just going down? It's just a matter of time until we're all found out,
Take your tears, put 'em on ice,
'Cause I swear, I'd burn this city down to show you the light."
Sweet dreams, Luci <3