Drunk in Love: Musical Chairs

Do you know what it’s like to lose control on something that you truly value as a vital part of your life? Think about it for a minute….think about the losses you have endured but didn’t consciously know you had lost? Has there ever been a time you gave up more than the ghost? Did you give up a piece of you and didn’t know it?

In this instance,

I am specifically talking about MUSIC.  Music to me is what writing is to my left hand: A natural occurrence.  I am tangled up in music….there, within the chords and melodies and lyrics, I tend to find myself in all capacities: Thoughts, feelings, the way I’m looking, the way I love, the way I hurt, etc….. I fall into the instruments one by one and then two by two and at some point, sometimes during the replay of the song I’m feeling at the moment, I find my way in love with the lyrics. Not always – Sometimes a beautiful beat is accompanied by horrific lyrics that don’t make the most sense, and while I might listen to it, I am hardly in denial of the presence of unnecessary or misguided lyrical content. But those songs that hit the mark, both musically and lyrically, are the things my ear dreams are made of. 

So let me pose this question again:

Do you know what it’s like to lose control on something that you truly value as a vital part of your life? I do. I lost my music in 2013 and throughout 2014 in a way that I don’t think I ever had before…..plenty of heartbreaks have left me in musical shackles for a couple of weeks…I wouldn’t be able to play a song or two without feeling reminders of what ‘used to be’….but for the most part, I have always bounced right back or always had a whole new collection of songs to keep it moving to, while giving no thoughts to the songs I was leaving behind. ……but that last time, I lost a lot of music….so much so that I couldn’t ignore that I had lost it. There were whole albums, entire playlists and individual songs that spread life reminders in my ears that I could no longer stand to listen to…. 

I believe a part of it was his/our connection as individuals (and together) where music was concerned….we both had a LOVE of music.  We used to sit and talk about music and songs and favorites…..music is one of the greatest and most important forms of art there is (this of course is my personal opinion).  Therefore, when I mentally associated songs with us, they became US; even tho ‘us’ was actually a figment of my imagination. When he sat on my couch and told me that Outkast’s Stankonia reminded him of us, I had never heard the song before….before the night was over, I had listened to it repeatedly. I kept thinking ‘love is us’, ‘love is you’……LOLOLOL…..i attached that song to us and it lived in my speakers….>WE lived in my speakers and earphones…..i added it to several playlists effortlessly …..and listened to it like it was a brand new release…….by the time we were done and over, when this song that I had never even heard before ‘us’ (even tho I had the album) would come on, I would get that nauseated feeling that made me want to run away from earshot of who ever was playing it and for some reason, now, it seemed like it was ALWAYS playing o.O ………………………………………………………

On December 17, 2013, Beyonce released Drunk in Love.

When I first took a look at the video and heard the song, I felt an awkward sense of Hell Yeah towards the song. On one hand, I thought it was kinda a BS song but I really loved the music and that bassline. But on the other hand, I heard a song about love. A song that celebrated getting drunk off of who you loved and making love until you couldn’t remember when and where you started. I listened a second time and decided I liked it. As a matter a fact, when that spiral sounding rift comes in, I could see myself slow walking a room in a seductive manner towards the man who I felt like I loved…I saw his bedroom and me in it….the chair that sat on the left side of his bed, next to the nightstand…..yeah, the same chair I leaned on when he ‘carrying in the groceries’ that one time. O.O #OOP

When bass drops in just before 1:40 mark, I saw us entangled in each other’s arm locks and salacious smiles…I could hear his voice, I could taste that salty sweat on his neck, I could hear what we were saying to each other and the way our bodies would roll when she says Surfboard. It all made sense….the black and white moving visuals of Beyonce and Jayz loosely swinging bodies and arms around an empty beach made me want to make suggestions to him. It was December and cold and  Christmas was literally right around the corner…..i wanted to fuck to this song. I wasn’t quite interested in making a slow winding love groove to old Tony Toni Tone songs; I desired to act up and act a fool w/each other. I mean by that point, we had long crossed boundaries that should have been reserved for that person ( foolish of me for thinking they were)….within 24 hours, I had added the song as its own playlist until I could figure out whether to start a new one or add it to the existing playlist entitled “Slopfest”. 

* Shrug *

I was already sold and gone and dickmatized (as Jill Scott would say) from the faux affections of this man, so it really didn’t take much for me to find yet another song that I thought reminded me of us. This song, Drunk in Love, made me think about the parking lot…..it reminded me of the first kiss….it seemed playfully wrong and sinfully good and the only thing that was missing behind the power couple’s shared vocals was the sound of me and him…..and our ‘beautiful bodies grinding off in a club’’…..

I looked forward to the day that I would play this while we found bliss in each other’s groove.

I think I sent it to him…..as a matter a fact, I am positive I sent him the whole damn video…it was still brand new……I was feeling us. I.don’t.know.how.that.was.possible.

I’ve been blind before, but idk, I guess I just wanted what I wanted to be true. As we know from this blog, by the time we got to the end of the December, the ass had literally fallen out …..his Christmas gift to me was being sloppy and cyber messy enough for me to see so I could do his dirty work for him. And that’s how it went …

..my ‘breastessis were never his breakfast’, he never ‘slide the panties to the side’, and I was most certainly ‘TIRED”. The lyrics had taken on new meanings…new directions. …..we never did anything to this song. I started envisioning him laughing at me when I first sent it to him. We used to send each other music or have online youtube song battles, so sending music wasn’t anything different….so I was pretty sure he was comfortable in his laughter from me sending him that song when I did. I would almost bet that the true Mrs. in his life probably shared that song with him too….only difference is they probably did have a slopfest to Beyonce’s winding, drunkish vocals. 

The song that I had only been bobbing my head to for a couple of weeks became a song that when it came on the radio, it made me so queasy that I could have pulled over for a quick trip to the roadside vomit factory. Seriously….every time I heard the song, I would almost kill myself trying to get it off my radio. My truckie radio is silly too…the knob sometimes turns the music UP instead of DOWN….and it did that on more than one occasion…..

Which brings me back to the original question: Do you know what it’s like to lose control on something that you truly value as a vital part of your life?

When you have that EXTRA relationship with music, losing the ability to hear it in whatever capacity you have ‘lost’ it can be almost debilitating… …but here’s why: It’s not about the loss of music completely; it’s actually about the loss of yourself! It’s hard enough to move on after a failed companionship and when we are trying to get on with our lives, one of the things I think we do (or at least I do) is big up myself for every hurdle tackled and beat !

“I’m no longer praying for his/her downfall “ #Victory “I haven’t checked his IG page in a week” #Victory  “I don’t send messages, online or over the phone anymore” #Victory 

So when you find yourself inundated with extreme disdain every time you hear a song that snaps you back into an old reality, it’s rather disappointing and more than that, it’s hard to swallow. If you actually invest a moment or three to think about it, you will see that the disappointment factor exists because you realize you have lost a part of YOU. You aren’t just forfeiting songs: You are forfeiting yourself. You are saying “this part of me has changed therefore this part of me can never be confronted ever again”. You are saying ‘this will forever stand a monument for this portion of my life and I will not ever return to visit this monument. I will have to build anew”.  But when it’s music, it’s not that easy to build anew. Trust me, I started all kinds of ‘new’ playlists and tried it but there was always this yanking, irritating feeling of ‘how dare a MF come into my life and change me AND my damn music?? !!!”

I’ve blogged about not being able to ever hear Stankonia from Outkast again as well as how hard it was for me to ‘reclaim’ my rights to listen to the Lose to Win CD from Fantasia and then there was that damned 20/20 by Justin Timberlake that I casually flaunted as the soundtrack to our ‘budding relationship” …..i could not listen to any of these songs. NONE of them. When I would turn them on, I would feel on the verge of a panic attack. Several times, I attempted to confront the ghost of Not-Really-Ex’s-Past and just listen to all or some or even a few of the songs and take back my power. It didn’t work. Often times, I would end up turning off the song(s) before they could reach the chorus….. Then there are those times you can’t control the music dial. …being in other people’s cars is sometimes the worst possible thing to do in situations like this… …my sis was a huge JT fan, so getting in the car with her almost guaranteed that I would hear at least one JT song…I never said anything but it was like nails on chalkboard…..at least once, tears welled up and idk if a few fell or if I was able to push them back but I do recall that happening on Drink You Away and Not A Bad Thing, both of which I heard several times in her car before I was ready. Her and my niece would be singing away to the lyrics while I would be thinking about opening the door and falling out while the car was in motion…..<  sounds like a stretch right? Welp, it’s the truth. But who am I to tell someone to turn that shit off cause I think it’s giving me a heart attack???? Especially when I know it’s not gonna kill me?

But you know what…..Stress kills. All it takes is the right amount of stress at the right time and you could very well have a heart attack or a stroke and the only thing the doctors can attribute it to IS stress, but no one can say for certain WHAT stress it was……..so in reality, I guess it’s better to open your mouth rather than suffer through five minutes of runs and high notes and musical instruments that literally strum your pain with each  chord. …I gave him me after the fact and he didn’t even know he still had me…..or maybe he did. It fed his ego greatly to know I was one half heel step from running in behind him with a white flag and a list of Pros About Januarie….so maybe he knew….maybe his energy felt the hold he still had on me through music…. He had my love of music on LOCK.

It didn’t stop or end w/Drunk in Love or JT or even Fantasia……there was the “The York Inspire: Old Sauce” playlist I made …..i almost deleted it, but I didn’t because I hoped highly that this would pass even though after a few months, I started to think it never would. The York Inspire had the entire Dead Presidents soundtrack on it, which was one of his favorite soundtracks as we had discussed one night in the car outside the spot. In addition to that, I had thrown some of Love Jones soundtrack tunes on there as well as some sexy En Vogue and a few other nice hits that all reminded me of him, us …somehow.

I stopped playing it. I could not listen to Curtis Mayfield or Al Green or En Vogue or Beyonce or Justin Timberlake or Fantasia or even Marvin Gaye or Lenny Williams.  None of these songs were new to me…they didn’t fall into my life upon meeting #MuseWeasel, but I gave him the rights to the songs as he produced them and banned me from listening….every time I tried to confront myself, I would get entangled in that asphyxiating feeling…..it was like I would shake internally starting with my veins. I would cry sometimes but for the most part, if I heard one of those songs, I would pause. LIFE would literally pause…..and no, I didn’t start star gazing about shoulda, coulda, woulda’s…..i started wondering why I hadn’t set his car on fire….

Or painted his windshield…..which I knew would lead to me painting his windows and doors because he was a renter…..

Or why hadn’t I waited for them to show up and then just show my ass and whatever happened just happened???? How come I didn’t stand up for myself???? I would zone so far left field and so unhealthy, that eventually,  I just stopped listening to EVERYTHING ….i switched my entire listening catalog.

I didn’t delete nothing, but I threw the JT CD in the back of my truckie (where it became scratched badly) and did the same with Fantasia. I made rap playlists and listened only to them and on an occasion, I would listen to something slow that had the possibility to make me think too much, but for the most part, I was Team NO R&B, NO LOVE SONG, NO MAKING LOVE SONGs, NOTHING….nothing but fuck bitches, get money. I made playlists called #TheseHeauxsCantRideForFree and #WhereDaRatchetAt ….but I had to skip over so many other playlists to get to these. Slopfest, A Bright Beam of Light, You’re Gonna Want Me Back…..all these musical biographies of mine with corresponding names to help me with my musical mood swings and here I had up and let someone else turn my Spotify into an Indian Burial Ground….my dusty and dirty now-demonized spirit would rise from the smoke of my earphones when I tried to listen…..

And of course, Drunk in Love was that song I would swerve off the curb trying to get off my radio. 

FF one year later: 

So I spent all of 2014 ducking and dodging the remnants of my past and the music that was it's soundtrack. I played the game of 'oh i can't hear this' until I grew tired of the foolery....i ignored the playlists that I pay ten bucks a month to have access to.....i waited for the clouds to open up through my speakers and they never did. I had to come to realize two things:

1. There was still a piece of me that was with that guy.
2. It was solely up to me to get it back. Which meant 'time' was not my friend. Time would not pass and then magically I'd open my eyes and see myself dancing seductively, alone, to the rifts in Ne Yo's Lazy Love....nope. I had to do this on my own. #Storyofourlives

I had to decide that those two factors were about to be nonfactors. I had to let go. Snap back. Snatch back. Pull back, pull up and then pull off. I had to be ok with healing COMPLETELY....and more than that, I had to be ok with healing myself instead of waiting for this mysterious time that heals ALL wounds to come serve up a bandaid. 

And so I did. Little bits at a time, I would test the waters by playing one of the many songs I had sworn off of. I don't know where I started. Well, I guess you can say I started by allowing ONE song to be let go of forever. I'd give it away and turn it loose as the sacrifice for my sanity. I couldn't think of a better song to choose than that which I had only heard after he brought it into my life, one night, while we were sitting on the couch. I was hanging on him, rubbing and touching different parts of his skin when he told me about this song and how it reminded him of us. I was sniffing and eating the taste of his cologne and I was trying to stare happiness down his eyes.....if i recall right, he was a bit stressed out that night. I loved that we shared an Outkast song. I love Outkast.  And I let them go.....
.........well not Outkast as a whole.
But I let go of Stankonia. 

I went through every playlist I thought it was on and removed it. It was on several. I actually tried playing it first before I did that.....i made it through the first half before changing my mind. I went ahead and completed my mission. I have not listened to or heard this song in ages. And even though I can still hear that bass beating in the silence of my thoughts, I know that I will never  voluntarily listen to it again. But I also know, in letting go of a song that we were attached to, I would be ok if I heard it again while out somewhere.......I mean, everyone loves Outkast. 

As for the rest, I reclaimed my space...little by little, I would play bits and pieces of 20/20 (JT) and I would find myself completely ok with listening to him. I did the same with Fantasia's Lose to Win album, although I knew that album would forever be the foreshadow I never applied to my eyes......until it was too late. So, there will always be a faux 'us' attached to it, but I have listened to it and I didn't keel over and die. In the weeks that followed, I started going back to my love & sexy song playlists......bit by bit by bit, like building a foundation for a house one brick at a time, I would find myself pushing my boundaries and taking back the pieces of me that had been scattered on the showroom floor for way too long. 

I moved from my earphones at work to my CD player in the truckie....i found my Fantasia and played it...i found my JT, and played it.....matter a fact, I just took JT out of my cd player last week......when I first put it in somewhat unconsciously, it hit me as I was driving with my sunglasses on and my body language turned up.....I was not trying to force myself into something....i was no longer 'listening for a healing' or reaction.....i was back to jamming. I literally wanted something else to listen to and since it had been awhile for that particular CD, I chose it without pause or thought... I was singing the lyrics to Pusher Love Girl and Strawberry Bubblegum with the same enthusiasm as before!! I played a great deal of the cd and let it sit in my player for awhile and remained unbothered by it. ...i wasn't driving around in tears or stuck to attached memories that only I owned. That was when I knew I should blog this portion of my journey. It speaks volumes......at least to me. 

We give away small and big pieces of ourselves and don't even be knowing it sometimes.....while our mouths are saying 'I'm ready to be over this' and 'it's just gonna take some more time', in actuality it may be us subconsciously REFUSING to heal ....it is true that it's possible to stunt your own growth because you get so stuck and used to hurting, that NOT being hurt in even the smallest of ways is like uncharted territory that you aren't ready to be in. And don't get me wrong; it definitely still takes TIME. Time is not the enemy, however, time can become the suspension we become stuck in. ....like a 3rd dimension that prevents full healing. We use it to our advantage while missing the memo that we have no advantage....rather, we are using TIME to insult our healing. 

I most definitely have been able to look back and see different moments, like this one, where I have given the ghost of me unto failed relationships and didn't know that's what I was doing, therefore, I couldn't take ME back. I couldn't reverse or undo the damage because I wasn't fully aware of all the damage that was done. What if I have carried damaged pieces around in my luggage all this time??? Seeing as though this epiphany only just happened, how many bags am I carrying? How have I managed to fly across the country with these bags??? How many bags are you holding because you haven't ever been fully honest or at least 'aware' of what parts of you were still on loan ? 

Music was mine. Or at least one of them. I have unpacked this bag now. All my Spotify playlists are up for grabs when it comes to listening. Justin Timberlake is no longer a long stiletto nail across the chalkboard; it's my jam session. 

What is yours? What have you given away or let go of and think you would never have to confront it again?  What is missing from your playlist ? What are the nails on chalkboard for you? What are they writing? What are you missing from yourself? Identify it purposely. Don't let TIME be the reason you ignore it. 
Time will only heal the wounds are you open to confronting. 

Find your all your misplaced pieces of self and your love and reclaim it all. Put your precious gemstones back in your crown. Then, put your crown back on, toss your robe in the wind and put on a damn good song, 

And go forth and be healed. 
Matter a fact,

get Drunk off the way you Love to be completely healed. #SURFBOARD
* turns on Drunk in Love & smiles freely * 

Blogtrack:

"I couldn't help but notice your pain
'my pain'? 
It runs deep, share it with me!" 
~2Pac 

~jY