The phone rings.I stare at it like it’s a poltergeist I should run from.I don’t answer.I know it’s someone who means well.Cleo, maybe?One of my brothers or my mother, who’s been trying to connect.She wants to help me.It’d be good for her image.Obviously, she has her priorities straight.
If I answer, they might ask the same thing:
“How are you holding up?”
Like sobriety is a mountain I’m climbing in a denim jacket and no rope.As if I’m brave for not poisoning myself today.
The truth?
I don’t know how to hold anything.
I’m almost thirty-one years old, forty-nine days sober, and I feel like I’m learning to be a human from scratch.By noon, I head to the gym for an hour, shower, and pretend it’s an accomplishment.
By two, I walk to the record store just to breathe the dust and vinyl.There are books in here too.It’s too feminine, trendy, and ...it’s just not for me.There’s a cello gathering dust in the corner.I want to ask if it has a bow, if I could touch it and see if I can find some music behind it.I don’t.
I end up buying the EP for “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”It feels like something I should listen to.I don’t know why, it just does.
By four, I’m counting the hours until it’s socially acceptable to go to sleep and end the day without breaking something.
And through it all, there’s this small, gnawing thing at the base of my skull whispering that maybe I was better when I was drunk.More interesting.More alive.
I hate that thought.
But I don’t know how to disprove it yet.While I wait for that time, I open my laptop and make sure the cable to the internet is connected.I wait for it to dial up and almost smile when I see a message from StringTheory27.My day just got a little better.Sometimes I feel like there’s one person in this world who understands a part of me, even when she can be infuriating.We’ve been exchanging messages for the past three weeks, and she’s given me more hope than anyone else has in the past ten years.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: StringTheory27
To: DeadStrings
Date: May 3rd, 1997, 4:19 PM
Subject: People can be infuriating
You’ll understand this.I know you will.You feel music—not just hear it, not just play it.You breathe it the way other people inhale oxygen, and that’s why I’m messaging you right now instead of punching someone’s face—I’m a pacifist.
I just had a long, exhausting conversation with this guy who’s apparently convinced he’s the sole interpreter of every song ever written.You know the type—condescending voice, smug smile, full of unsolicited trivia.He swore up and down that “The Logical Song” is just about a guy asking for help, some upbeat little cry for guidance wrapped in catchy chords and a cool sax solo.I nearly choked on my saliva.
He’s wrong.To me, that song is a fucking requiem.A goodbye letter to childhood wrapped in synths and sarcasm.It’s the unraveling that happens when you wake up one day and realize you’ve outgrown the version of yourself that believed the world was good just because you were told it was.
It’s that moment when wonder curdles into weariness, and nothing feels safe anymore.Not even yourself.
It’s not about asking for help.
It’s about mourning who you were before the world got its hands on you.
There’s the line where he’s asking what we’ve learned, and every time I hear it, something cracks wide open inside me.Because it’s not a real question.It’s a scream.It’s someone clawing through years of bullshit, trying to find the truth in the rubble of everything they were told to be.
It’s about realizing you’ve been so busy becoming who they said you should be—sensible, logical, responsible—that you forgot who you actually are.Or were.
And, yeah, maybe that sounds dramatic.But, fuck, so is losing the dreamer inside you.So is watching the magic slip away, one practical decision at a time, until you can’t even remember the last time you did something just for the joy of it.Just for the rebellion of wonder.
That song isn’t a cry for help.It’s a funeral.It’s the soundtrack to every moment you start censoring yourself because adults don’t think like that.Because you’re supposed to move on.To be mature.Efficient.Sensible.Useful.
Manage your expectations.
