I made a list.
Working title: “Songs for When You’re Afraid to Speak, to Love, or to Stay.”
“Everybody Hurts”—R.E.M.
This one almost feels illegal to play when you’re actually hurting.It’s too on-the-nose.But it never lies.It meets you where you are and just ...stays there.No pressure to be okay yet.
“Song to the Siren”—This Mortal Coil
This is what falling in love sounds like when you’re convinced it’s going to ruin you.
It’s so fragile, it barely exists.
Like love itself.
“Wild Horses”—The Rolling Stones
Because sometimes love isn’t loud or fast.It’s slow, painful, and full of restraint.This song aches the way fear does—quietly, and for a long time.
“The Sound of Silence”—Simon & Garfunkel
The fear of speaking, of being heard wrong—or worse, not heard at all.This one wraps silence in velvet and makes you feel every stitch.
“A Case of You”—Joni Mitchell
This one scares me the most.Because it’s love stripped of all the fairytales.Love that stays even when it’s wrecked you.
And I don’t know if I’m brave enough for that.
You don’t haveto make a list.
But tell me—do you ever feel it too?
The fear of living with your heart wide open?
DeadStrings:Hey there, I was wondering if I would hear from you today.Fear?Yeah.I’ve been scared shitless but ...
I’ve never lived with my heart wide open.Not once.Not even close.And, yeah, I think that’s probably the saddest part of all of this.
That someone like me—someone who lives and dies by the sound of distortion and the scrape of guitar strings—has no idea how to exist without some kind of filter, muting everything (be that alcohol or drugs).
I’ve lived turning emotions into something I could control.And that’s one of the reasons why I’m a fucking mess.Because once, there was someone who didn’t let me keep the distortion turned up.She turned the volume all the way down, forced me to sit in the silence, and in that silence, I heard things I didn’t want to know existed inside me.
She scared the shit out of me.
Not because she was cruel.Or reckless.Or toxic.She wasn’t any of those cliché things we try to throw at people when they make us feel too much.She was ...observant, honest.Brutally, unapologetically alive.
She loved with all her heart, and being loved by her was inexplicably perfect—so perfect that I sometimes felt unworthy.
She had this look—this enormous, soul-fucking stare that didn’t just glance across a room or catch your expression like a breeze.No.She’d lock eyes with you and suddenly, you weren’t in your body anymore.You were laid out and dissected, your moods mapped like constellations, your lies crumbling at the corners of your mouth before you could even test how believable they sounded.
Let’s not talk about her, though.
Because talking about her feels a lot like walking barefoot through glass and pretending it’s a goddamn Sunday stroll.And still—I keep bringing her up, don’t I?
I always believed she’d be my ruin.Not because she asked to be.Not because she threatened to be.But because everything about her made me feel like I was just two wrong words away from unraveling completely.
She wanted everything without even asking.It was never in the desperate way most people beg for affection, but in this devastating way that said: I see what you’re hiding, and I want it anyway.I’ll love you just as you are.
