gnvrh

[gnvrh]

PlaylistsOr… Disadvantages of Being the Last Sweet Cloud in the Sky

Sometimes you just wake up in the middle of the night and remember that, as an adult covered in free-will, you can do whatever you want. That was me when I woke up in the middle of the night today, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., with a song stuck on my head. The rest was a journey through empty dark streets and unwavering feelings that I'm still trying to understand, but that I was really needing to experience. These are the songs that followed me.

Favorite Lyrics (Doce): Nunca vai dar certo, não ⬩ Mas eu gosto se a gente finge que sim ⬩ Nunca acredite no que eu te juro ⬩ Quando você tá em cima de mim ⬩⬩ Eu sou a soma do que eu não consigo ⬩ Algo em mim ainda tá perdido ⬩ E eu preciso encontrar ⬩⬩ Hoje eu acordei lembrando ⬩ Do que o amor já fez comigo ⬩ Eu não posso ser seu;

The kickstart of it all hit me like a basketball in my stomach, which is still recovering from the atrocious things I did at my birthday party (things which I obviously don't regret). I woke up in the middle of the night with Doce by Jão stuck in my head for random reasons. So, as an old habit of mine, I picked up the phone and played it. I can't even begin to describe what I felt listening to it. It’s not like I haven’t heard the song before, but at first, during this unexpected wake up call, all the things I had or never had came flushing through the arteries around my heartstrings. Today I had woken up remembering all the things love had done to me. The things triggered in me, whenever I picture all my impossible love stories that never had a happy ending, should make me want to avoid wanting to still feel like there's hope in pretending that something will work out (even when I know it won't), but they don’t. And even though the face that comes to my mind as the latest biggest heartbreak can’t make me relate in detail about having him on top of me — because it was the other way around — I still swore many things that none of us should believe, while knowing that I would never be his. Just as I finally realized I shouldn't let some things and people have all this control over me, I am more and more letting go of all the fantasy as I walk around my life seeing what is real. What belongs to me. And, therefore, what doesn't.

The minutes turned into hours, and I was having this urge to jump out of my bed and feel the breeze in my skin as my hands would be dancing in the air, as the song was still blasting on my years and my window was bringing the late night cold into my room. So, in a sudden realization that I'm an adult who can just do whatever I want, I put on my jeans and the new shirt I got for my birthday (that, normally, I would only want to wear for the first time when going out to see other people — but this time around, I didn't care that I would debut it just to go for a walk a few blocks down from my apartment) and I left my room.

This song would only appear again when I was on a swingset, and this time around my chest felt tight when the lyrics told me that I was the sum of everything I didn't get to get, because part of me was still lost and I was yet to find it. Indeed, I felt like something was missing, and I felt this intense ache in my heart, the tears wanting to come out but unable to, and, before I could forget, I grabbed my phone and recorded a voice memo that said: "I wish I knew how to explain this thing I have inside my chest, that wakes me up at 4 a.m. to feel all the love I had or never had, while on a swingset". And before I could jump off of it — because my intrusive thoughts were thinking I would become some Final-Destination-type-of-news because I was smelling some gas around me coming from a truck parked outside the swing-set park — I watched the night and the building lights around me feeling... whatever this feeling was.

Favorite Lyrics (Julho): Em cada canto que eu vou ⬩ Eles me perguntam se eu já sei o que o amor ⬩ Vira quando chega o fim ⬩ Mas como eu poderia se eu ainda estou aqui? ⬩ Se eu ainda me lembro de tudo? ⬩ Se eu ainda estou em julho? ⬩ Agora, julho é você;

In between my building door and the swingset on a church ground, I decided to change the music because, at that point, I had been listening to the same one for more than an hour. That's when I decided to pick Julho by Jão. This song has a life of its own. I swear, I'm not sad anymore about the reason that made this song hurt, but I still remember and reminisce about everything, even knowing damn well it’s wrong. I still remember the feeling of walking, almost crying, to the sadness of these strings that were hanging me to choke from the ceiling. I still remember the screaming of the lyrics at the bridge as my hope to purge all the demons I thought were angels at a safe space. It doesn't matter anymore. But sadness is a stain on your favourite sweater that you don't have the courage to throw out. So during this late night, while I wanted to keep the cathartic feeling going on, it was the only obvious choice. Just like the other Jão song, it triggered this sensation of nostalgia for something that never happened and the devastation that once I would hold on to like a lifeline, whenever my expectations would turn into icebergs, sinking the ship of my wildest imagination. There's not much to say. I will not linger more than I should on this story.

Moments later, there I was sitting in a parking lot after taking some really cool pictures. My un-tired body witnessing the sun rising and people walking their dogs or going to work. I just sat there on my own, thinking. And thinking. But even though my dreams still bring the secret touch of a finger in inside a courtroom made of fair-weather fake friends that were only watching me close (clutching their pearls and gossiping) to use my missteps as evidence, I go back slightly in time to a moment where I was looking at your pictures almost with disgust at myself, but knowing that you made me see that I can have the love I keep looking for, when things were good and it was just me and you. Maybe that’s the reason why I can’t fully let go. Because whenever I think about love I think about our endless deep conversations. I think about the way you lips looked and how you made me feel special. And I think “if I got you, I can have anyone else”. And that's the hope I'm holding on to like a lifeline. Not feeling the devastation of it all. Just the hope.

Favorite Lyrics (As Desvantagens De Amar Alguém Que Mora Longe): Eu despeço já pedindo pra que você fique ⬩ Que você fique ⬩ Que não se vá ⬩⬩ Da sacada vejo um avião;

Favorite Lyrics (A Última Nuvem do Céu): Que me reflete a dor de quem eu não fui ⬩ Que me remete a flor a desabrochar ⬩ Que me derrete o peito num frio dе abril ⬩ E que me sequеstra sem me roubar ⬩⬩ Que me reflete ao medo de ser tão só ⬩ Que me remete a dor de não ser tão são ⬩ Que me derrete a mente, se eu for pensar ⬩ E que me faz chorar sem nem magoar;

While going through old memories yesterday afternoon, I came back to the song Você Gosta Dela by Daparte, which I used to love. While on that Brazilian vibe that started the fate of my latest 24 hours, I went on a rabbit hole of saving songs from other artists to listen to later. One of those songs was, as I thought, As Desvantagens de Amar Alguém, which is an interesting name for a song already. However, hours later, when I pressed play on it while working on the draft of the post PlaylistsOr... Dumplings In a Parking Lot, I realized that the full name was As Desvantagens de Amar Alguém Que Mora Longe by Lagum. Not fancying the idea of loving people who lived far from me, I skipped it entirely and focused on other ones from Lagum. However, the song was too good to be ignored by pure semantics. So I gave up and used it for my training at the gym, and simply like that, it became part of my life.

So much so that after being tired of Jão, I put this song on what had now become a morning walk. The way Brazilian songs are so poetic is something that never ceases to amaze me. I could translate it, but it would never feel the same. I wish I were a painting. I wish I were seeing airplanes. I wish I were seeing bags being dropped on the floor — but this time not because of something that didn't work out as Acidente by Day Limns would once have me sing it, but as a new short-lived beginning. It was when I felt that this adventure was coming to an end that I stopped at a 24-hour Rabba and grabbed noodles and headed home to watch Gossip Girl and finish some muffins I had gotten from work. Which I did, and that led me to a quick nap. Avoiding mundane details, A Última Nuvem do Céu by Lagum as well came when I, hours later and still waking up from my nap, was trying to stop overthinking what I should do next and focus on one thing. I pulled up my phone then and decided that I would listen to the whole album that As Desvantagens de Amar Alguém Que Mora Longe had come from, and between more poetic and romantic melodies, this one came in.

Again, there's no way to describe the lyrics that tell the story of the last cloud in the sky that, while hanging in there, had seen everything between a bird singing and a woman being held while crying. That had felt everything between the fear of being so alone and the pain of not being sane. The rain was pouring outside, and even though I didn't come outside to dance in it — even though I wanted to, but was too tired to do it — I could see from my window there were many, many clouds in the sky, but I felt like I could be the last one. And I embraced my romantic roots that bathed me in the poetry of a life that not everyone will understand or like, but that makes me fulfilled. I want to feel like I can rip my heart out and explode myself into a million pieces by the simple starting note of a song or by the butterflies that comes with flying in the air secured by chains. I want to be the expression on my face and the light in my eyes when I see a beautiful painting on a beautiful building that I want to walk into again while holding hands with the one who's holding my heart. And if once I would end this post saying something like "and if you despise me for being me, know that I understand", now I couldn't care less. I just want to be attached to good things, not to this. Not to a name that could turn off word’s light it if it were at least real.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr… Simple

ㅤㅤ🎧 Listening To: Simple by Katy Perry and Simple by Joan ㅤㅤ📺 Watching: Supernatural Season One ㅤㅤ📖 Reading: Gossip Girl: I Like It Like That by Cecily von Ziegesar

My birthday cake tastes like a good idea I had last minute mixed with the exact type of pastry I wanted to have without even knowing. My mind wanders around the decisions I made either out of uncontrollable anger or calculated determination. It's true when they say that without your past you couldn't have arrived where you are, with all the knowledge created by scars that, before healing, hurt you like salt being poured on exposed skin; but sometimes the answer lies in things you buried deep down, beneath all the rusty armor you threw in unorganized piles, so quickly you needed to change them, every time you had to create a new defense for the arrows the archers were throwing at you when you were on the prey side of the spinning wheel. I know, I've said it a thousand times before, "nostalgia is a mind's trick" or "I know I wasn't all happy back then", but one thing, one small thing, is both true and worth visiting when it comes to the hours and days that no mortal soul will ever be able to come back to: the simplicity of it all.

Today I can't see my life without coffee (or worse addictions like drugs or sex apps), writing on my online journal (while keeping my physical one gathering dust with its last entry from April 10th during a speech class), while creating boards on my Pinterest (made up basically of blond boys which at this point just became a funny obsession that I use as a joke with my friends), but there was a day when none of that existed. One day I was just a kid coming back from my newspaper stand job with a horoscope magazine ready to see what my new Gemini year would bring to me. The rain was pouring outside and the TV had Supernatural on (season one, episode 4, Phantom Traveler, where there was a demon on an airplane). No cellphone. No broken heart. Not a million songs to listen to or a million TV shows to choose from. Just a little bit of everything and endless possibilities that only youth can unknowingly bring you.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to have a simple life. After so many changes — that includes situations from having a nervous breakdown a few months ago at school, to starting to name things I never named before (like "overstimulation" and "crash out"), and thinking that I might have ADHD —, everything that gives you power to understand who you are can also kill you slowly. Another thing I know I've said a thousand times is "awareness is killing me", which is just another simple truth. I wonder how it felt to live life without these names. I wonder how it felt to live life without doubting I could be me and I could make friends. This specific fear is in the past now, but I know I am a broken record. I remember everything. Today I walked by the place that used to have the bench that me and this guy would sit on after he had told me things that, unknowingly, would change my destiny forever, and I saw that the city council had torn it down. I stared at the empty space thinking about how that part of my recent history didn't physically exist anymore and how I wish they could also tear down my memories just as easily. Again, this specific memory is in the past now, but I know I am a rememberer. But of all things I wish I could remember, it was how simple everything really was.

These days I was looking for something to watch, and among the many movies I had on my watchlist, I couldn't find anything worth it. I struggled to find something that I would really like, even with so many options. That's when I decided that I didn't want to waste time picking something to watch if I never really intended to watch it in the first place. The amount of bad movies I've watched recently is insane. My goal is to always watch good things that make me feel inspired to come back here and write about it, but that's not how things work anymore with all the fast-food content of movies that are released digitally in less than a month after their theatrical release (or artists who release a lot of songs all the time just to try to stay relevant, in a sea of a thousand new songs coming out every week). I'm not saying it's all bad (for all that matters, I love seeing artists that I love, like Taylor, releasing huge albums every few months because I mean... I love music!) but sometimes I stop to pay attention to how many songs I love and then forget because someone released another song that I also love (and another movie, another TV show, and so on). So while scrolling to pick the next watch, I just said "fuck it" and settled down for a movie I had watched many, many times before: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Man, it was the best decision ever. My heart felt so full as I watched the movie ending with Michael and Kat's characters going down an escalator at Pennsylvania Station in New York, and that was when I decided that I would only watch what I have a real intention to. Things that I love. No matter if I had wacthed it before (it's not like I'll die having wacthed everything the world has ever created anyway). That's why I rewatched A Cinderella Story a few days before. And that's why I decided to rewatch Supernatural (even though I never finished and still don't intend to because after season 3 it just sucks — even though seasons 4 and 5 still felt watchable), which brought me back to that rainy blue day I mentioned before.

Could it ever be simple with me, though? It's true I'm learning how to be more centered now that I have real love around me with my friends, but I still know that, if there's one thing about me, it's that I'm not lowkey at all. When Taylor sings “and if I’m bleeding you’ll be the last to know”, I just know I could never relate to that because I need to let someone know. I need to put it out there. That's the whole reason why I have this blog that reached more than 100 entries up to now. With the many things we have now, I just can't let it all stay hidden underneath my carpet as if dust were stories told at drunken midnights. Secrets are not a funny thing to carry around, because they make me feel as though my skin is some sort of blanket they would crawl into and make a nest knowing that, for being secrets, they would never come out and so their solitude would be forever and they would stay safe and sound until I disintegrate. Nope, that's not me. I came to the conclusion I can't carry secrets. I can't know things I can't express. Too many things around can create too many things inside and, trust me, I already have too many things going in my head. I have too many examples of how I take too long to do the simplest things at home or at work. I have too many instances of me second-guessing whatever would be my next move because I couldn't stop overthinking if I should leave the house and do groceries, or go to the gym first, or shave my beard, or just read a book. And if I ever got offended whenever my friends said I'm always late, now I know that I am (I will take my time getting ready and being fashionable and scented thank you very much).

It all sounds so dramatic. I know. It's just the way my life has always been. But now, specifically, it's more tangible as I watch my time being controlled by other things. With this crazy new schedule, tiring habits, and new habitats, my brain chemicals are boiling. The highs feel too high and the lows too low. Now whenever I would drink from the Milky Way and drive constellations of bright lights, there is an opposite force waiting to cast me away to the roots of my undying hell. And that's just me quoting a song I wrote because I think it's just an awesome metaphor. And even though I feel like I am much better mentally and spiritually, I still wish I wasn’t carrying all the resentment I carry for this specific thing I'm too scared to mention because it could be used (again) against me. It still hurts even though it makes so much sense to me now that it's more about relationship dynamics then about me in particular. But if in one part of my life I still feel like I will have to create even more armours, the other is showing that, for the first time in a very long time, I’m not the one being left behind.

I know, at this point I'm just throwing everything into a blender (as if I'm making this new drink I'm obsessed with called Caffè Frappé, which is amazing for my taste buds but definitely not friendly to my body) and writing about a thousand things at once. But see? That's what I'm talking about. There's just too much going on. It's no surprise I'm desperately wanting to feel like life is simple again. Like I'm not in a race with anyone. And that this phase of my life is temporary but also very instructive. After all, if there's one thing about me, it's that I realized how I'm living my best life now. My pictures never looked more aesthetic, my friendships never felt more full of love, and there's not a single part of my body that I hate. All the uncertainties may take my breath away for a second or two, but I'm trusting the process. And I'm learning to never, ever, overstay my welcome. I'll be leaving at the slightest sign that I'm not enjoyed or that I'm not enjoying. Maybe that's what simplicity is all about.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Nothing Left To Lose

ㅤㅤ🎧 Listening To: How You Get The Girl and Message In a Bottle by Taylor Swift ㅤㅤ📺 Watching: Clown in a Cornfield by Eli Craig and Until Dawn by David Sandberg ㅤㅤ🧭 Map: Richmond Street and King Street

Queued in my drafts are six entries that I need to finish. On my clock, it marks 01:24 a.m. on a Sunday where I have a shift at work at 1:00 p.m. In my glass, there’s wine. In my AirPods, there’s How You Get the Girl and Message In a Bottle by Taylor Swift. And in my heart, there’s this feeling that is becoming more and more recurrent — of how worth living my life is. The high of life that I was so afraid I would never feel again ever since I left Brazil is finally taking over me again. The high that doesn’t need illicit things to be sparked, because it’s the high of intangible, but still so real, possibilities. The high of knowing I can have everything I want in my life if I’m brave enough — but knowing that I am brave enough, because I’m writing these words in a different country from where I was born, after all. I can belong anywhere. I keep having this sensation inside of me, that feels stronger than just a gut feeling, that I know exactly what I need to do to get everything I want in life. It’s not a word. It’s not a plan. It’s just a feeling. It's not a thing I have completely, but that I'm reaching towards, slowly but steady.

Ever since I left Brazil, I lost everything. I lost the stability of a safe and promising career. I lost the friends that I made and the confidence I never knew I had, because it was just in me. I lost the safety of my comfort zone. But pointing out all the things that I lost is not a negative thing — it’s a reminder. I don’t see it as a game I’m losing, but a game that I’m learning how to win. Deep inside, I’m still a scared person. I can’t see my friends going up high on a swing set without being scared that they will fall and hurt themselves. This fear that I always had in me made me plan every single step of my journey so far, from the moment I set foot in the airport that led me to this seat I’m in right now, pouring out these overstimulated, but truthful thoughts. I’m a control freak that needs to be sure I have everything organized so I can face everything that is not organized. However, that doesn’t stop life from surprising you. The perfectly laid out plans that I had, as I already talked about here, didn’t pan out the way I wanted. In fact, they mostly happened in the complete opposite direction, shaking my ground, unbalancing my core, and destabilizing me to the point of desperation. And in all that desolation, I faced the truth that I am not who I used to be, and that was intoxicating, exhilarating, but above all, terrifying. I’m becoming someone else. I’m being pulled towards things I feel deep in my heart but that I'm still not sure that I should want or that I can get it, and I’m doing things I had never done before but that feels possible. I’m watching life unfold in front of me with a directionless map that shows me that I need, more than ever, to surrender. To trust. To commit. And I need you to believe me when I say this: it’s blood-curdling. How can I let go if the first thing we humans do is think about everything that can go wrong? I don’t know what’s going to catch my fall. What if it’s rocks and not safe arms? What if I do land safely on the ground but see that around me there is everything but what I always thought was what I need in perfect dreams and Pinterest boards? I know it would still be real, because of my safe fall — but how would it feel to watch all my certainties shatter? Would I ever be able to stop wondering?

It’s not like I thought about this for the first time now. This whole thing has been building and boiling up for ages now. All the self-awareness I sometimes curse (and that I remember exactly how it started: a few years ago when I discovered more about our Ego and Shadow) led me to this state of mind that feels so real to me, but that I’m scared may sound like crazy talk. But the simple truth is: how can a simple walk from a double feature at the movies — where I watched Clown in a Cornfield and Until Dawn — make me realize, once more, that the best thing I ever did was leave Brazil? Having the necessity to start over made me put so many things into perspective, and that made me see things in different ways. It’s true when they say that unsteady waters make good sailors, because right now I really am that white-dressed man with the hands on the helm. Even though spring came to ease the fears that winter brought to my life, there are a lot of things I’m still unsure about, but for the first time ever, I’m not trying to fix them immediately. I’ve come to learn that there’s no reason to lose my mind over certain things, because there’s nothing to be done but to see what happens. It’s a lesson that I know I needed to learn a long time ago, but that only now I am starting to grasp.

Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t want to become some crazy spiritual guy who thinks he’s too evolved. I still want to mess up and do stupid shit in my life. And I don’t want to sit at a bar table and read Dostoevsky, listen exclusively to classical music, only talk about old French movies, and follow wizards’s teachings and techniques. Which I don’t think I will anyway, because I know that I still want to spend the rest of my days reading queer novels by Adam Silvera, get obsessed with all the Taylor Swift songs I can get, and watch movies about coming of age. But inevitably, when there’s nothing to be done but grow yourself up, some things will end up being left behind, and I’m already feeling those things slipping away. What is funny is that, again, I don’t feel like I am really losing them. I won't lie, I still get sad when I think about some possibilities that seemed so bright in my mind but that were rusty and impossible in reality. I still get worried that I might be completely wrong about everything and make a fool out of myself. But I know that my gravity is centered, and that, for worse or for better, this is where I’m supposed to be. And I’m so grateful. I’m grateful to know that I have friends I can talk to about these crazy thoughts and be understood. I’m grateful to have hands to hold when I feel triggered by things I never knew would trigger me. And, most importantly, I am grateful that I have places to come back to: myself and home. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know if I’ll get there. It’s always easier wrote than done. But I know I will “try” my best to do it. Everything is close enough to reach, and it’s just too late to back down now.

[gnvrh]

MoviesOr... Final Destination Bloodlines

It’s been more than a decade since I sat down at a movie theatre to watch a Final Destination movie. Back when the fifth movie was released, the night when I watched Sam have his premonition and everything that went downhill after that, was a dream come true for the kid who used to spent his late nights watching the other movies on my local TV station. From thinking the first one wasn’t that horrifying to being traumatized by the second, I almost had the chance to watch the third in theatres, but my godfather decided not to take me to see that one in the very last minute (I can still see, with much disappointment in my eyes, the cardboard poster reacreation of the rollercoaster scene at my local theatre...). If the fourth I had to burn illegally onto a CD to watch it non-stop, nothing back then would have stopped me from watching the fifth on the big screen, not now that I could do it without needing anyone else to take me. Years passed, and I thought I would never have the chance to experience a Final Destination in theatres again. Thankfully, I was mistaken. Ever since the last movie, I’ve watched many gory movies (even some Saw sequels that were terrible), but nothing ever came close to my fulfil the love once created by Final Destination. So when the sixth one was announced, I was ecstatic! I couldn’t believe it was happening.

Truth be told, the first trailer was really disappointing. The trailer itself was great, but the storyline they were promising made me very cautious. With the whole story of a family being chased, that would mean no random people on a random trip to somewhere which was the foundation of the series. And with the whole book with details about Death’s plan, it sounded like one of those cliché storylines with a book full of sketches with the origin of the devil. It didn’t help that there was also an old crazy lady in an old crazy cabin. I was seriously scared that they would change the whole story to make it look fresh. I certainly thought it wouldn’t be necessary because Scream, for example, remained pretty much the same throughout its six installments (and I absolutely loved the last one) without suffering from it. With all these remarks and fears, I still couldn’t wait for the day I would sit down and watch what the directors had came up with.

The weeks leading up to the release date were hell for my friends. While working at the auditions at my college, the friend who was working with me didn’t have any other choice but to hear me yap non-stop about how excited I was about the release of the movie. I would spend all the free time we had scrolling through Reddit to see any possible new information. That’s when I found out that they were doing advanced screenings of the movie in New York and Los Angeles. That made me realize that they would probably do that in Canada — after all, most movies are filmed here anyway, even if they’re supposed to be set in New York. With that piece of hope, you could say I started putting into the universe how much I wanted to watch Final Destination before the official release. But how? That was the question. If back in Brazil I would definitely be a part of every special event related to movies or TV shows, I had no idea how to find that in Toronto. That was when I remembered that my school used to give us advanced screening tickets for movies, and with that in mind, I tried to get any possible information from my coordinator. Unfortunately, he didn’t know a thing about advanced screenings organized by Warner Bros. That didn’t stop me, however. For the next few days, I didn’t go a day without Googling “Advanced Screening Final Destination Toronto”. That’s when I found out that some Instagram pages were selecting fans to watch a special screening on Monday the 12th. With the conviction that I always get what I want, I entered the competitions and, by sending heartfelt messages to a page or two about how much the movie meant to me and how I wasn't just another profile wanting free tickets, I ended up getting passes to watch it. I mean... I knew I would. There was no doubt about that. It may be silly, but these little things remind me that there’s nothing I can’t achieve if I put my mind to it and then let it flow. And that I can get whatever I want if I’m brave enough. For example, I had another advanced screening the other day, and once there I sat down without a care in the world in the area designated for VIPs and press even without stamps or identification that I was part of the cool kids there. Not only did I stay there during the whole movie, but I also ended up making friends with people I would have never met if I had just sat in the regular seats. Again, it’s not like I got the role of my dreams or won the lottery, but for me, these small wins remind me that I have nothing to lose and that I just have to try.

Fast forward to The Day (with capital Ts and Ds), I took the whole Monday to myself (no work, not other plans — apart from an interview for a job that I was incredibly interested in and that I had been selected again with the mindset that I don't need to force anything that I really want) until it was time to leave my apartment and go to the movie theatre. When I got there, even with one hour to kill, I saw a huge line of people, and I couldn’t help but remember the time I went to the same place to watch Wicked and didn’t get in because there weren’t enough spaces left. On that day, I wasn’t sad because I never really wanted to see that movie, but today I was desperate to watch Final Destination. I simply couldn’t miss the opportunity! However, if there’s another thing I’m learning, it’s that there are things that are not in my control, and therefore, there’s no need for me to freak out over them. Getting anxious or nervous about it, I thought, wouldn't change the outcome if there weren't enough seats by the time my turn comes. So I just waited and relaxed. Of course, my almost desperation was in vain, there were still seats left after all, and I got into the theatre without a worry and got the best seat I could ever ask for.

One thing about me is that I will get excited when watching my favorite movies for the first time, especially at a special screening where I have the chance to see the movie before the entire city. That being said, just like when I watched Avengers Infinity War and End Game, I’m sure the people beside me were mad at me. I don’t do it on purpose, but I couldn’t help but scream, laughm jump in my seat, and contort myself during the movie. It is an intense experience, after all. So brutal. So gory. So explandid. I absolutely loved it! At one moment, I got so scared by a jump scare that I instinctively opened my arms and invaded a bit of the sitting space of the girl on my left. She, deservedly, looked at me with the most judging eyes in the universe, and I almost died of embarrassment as I said sorry. But, I mean… it’s a horror movie. You’ll get scared (I told her). Even so, I’m so sorry, lady. That didn’t happen again because I kept my reactions to my own seat. That’s why I love going to the movies alone and sitting in the front row. Not only am I close to the screen, but I can also overreact a bit without disturbing people around me. This day, however, it wasn’t possible since the theatre was packed.

The movie, if you didn’t guess it by now, blew all my expectations away. Thankfully, the book and the crazy old lady weren’t part of the main story. It was still a cliché idea, but since it didn’t change the dynamic of the movie itself, it didn’t annoy me. The initial disaster — although I still was to like the idea of it being set in the past because that’s a brutal change compared to the other movies — was excellent. It will never top the second and third movie accidents, but it was really good. I screamed so loud when the concierge was split in half by the elevator, and just as loudly I laughed when that annoying kid was hit by the piano, no matter how stupid that looked. And of course, it was terrible to watch Iris’s finger being skinned by her tight ring on her final moments. Although a very MCU take for an initial disaster (and a bit too long) I was very satisfied with the new concept. The following deaths were also interesting. The dad wasn’t surprising, since it was in the trailers, but I was very curious about how Erik’s death would look like, because in one of the trailers he seemed to die hit by a truck, and I could swear that would happen after his dad’s death, because of the location, but it didn't. I kept anticipating it, wondering if it would be Stefanie's missing vision, but it wasn't. Not only that, how would that happen if in another trailer he was supposed to die at the tattoo parlor? I don’t usually watch trailers, but for this one I couldn’t help but watch the first two, and I was glad to see that they misled us twice with Erik. When the tattoo parlor scene happened and we didn’t see his actual death, I was surprised by not enterily because I knew he would still be alive (if you don't see the death, the person didn't die, that's a movie rule) and… there he was. Back in the scene, making him the first memorable character from the movie. Then came Julia’s death, which made me so happy because it reminded me of my friends. That’s a weird sentence, but that’s because on one of our nights out, we saw garbage trucks picking up the trash as we walked Queen Street, and that was the first time I ever saw those mechanic trucks with their pickup claws. I remember being so scared of them and, as the scaredy-cat that I am, I was also afraid that my drunk friends would end up in an accident because we were too close to that shit (just like in the movie)! So not only did I laugh so hard at this coincidence, but I also laughed hard when Stronger by Kelly Clarkson started playing. Genius choice, just like Without You by Air Supply and Erik's sad clown mix. The CGI, though (just like in the rest of the movie), was very questionable (but then I remembered the other movies’s CGI are also bad, so that's okay).

Moving on, we have the best sequence in the movie: the one that involves the hospital. If until now I was completely boy-crushed by Charlie, in this sequence Bobby stole my heart. From the beginning, it was clear that he wasn’t just the jock other Final Destination movies were known to have, but him talking about his turtle was so heartbreaking. It made me really feel his death (I’m sure I’m not the only one). Too bad it was kind of uneventful, especially coming after the most amazing kill of the movie, with the MRI. It was so brutal seeing that happen with Erik, but so satisfying at the same time because of the rawness of it all. Not to mention the dick piercing that I called to myself would happen before it did (which made me laugh so hard again when it came to be). I won’t lie, though, I thought Erik was bullshitting Bobby and actually wanted him dead. I didn’t buy that he was so invested in saving him; I don’t know why. Still, it was really sad seeing him go. Before moving on to the final deaths, I need to say that although Tony Todd’s farewell from the franchise was really beautiful, I hated the development of his character here. They completely changed his personality. If, for the past five movies, you would think he was Death itself by the way he acted and talked, here he’s too human and nice. It didn’t help that they made him the final person on Death’s list. Although the twist about his character was really interesting (and understandable since he knew he wouldn’t be able to come back for possible sequels) I still think this redemption of his character contradicts all his other appearances. It would've been so nice if the mystery about what he was was kept. A shame.

Not only that, but also the final deaths are uneventful. I’d rather have seen Darlene die in the revolving door instead of being killed by that lamppost. Not only because it would unlock on us another fear, but mostly because it reminded me too much of Ian’s death in the third movie. Not to mention how Stefani drowns (on that small lake, seriously?) and is resuscitated by Charlie, on an uncreative callback to the second movie. By the time the movie reached this climax, all my hopes for a cameo were dead. I was really, really hoping that Wendy would make an appearance, and I would even be happy with a Kimberly one (although I really dislike how she’s the only survivor ever — she’s so meh). At every new suspense right before a characther would appear (like at the dad's funeral, or at the hospital before Toddy's characther, or even with the shoe lady picking up the penny that was just the random grandma) I kept my hopes high just to see it being crashed. Even so, the twist showing that Charlie didn’t really resuscitate Stefani and the train derailment and logs callbacks were a nice touch, but I was sad to see the siblings dying because I grew to love them so much.

By the end of it, I was completely overstimulated. What an experience! I had even forgotten to take an edible before the movie as I had planned, but I was glad I didn’t, because marching out from the theatre and into Dundas Square and its giant LED screens, I felt really ecstatic. I was on a high without having taken anything, so I was glad I didn't take it, because it would've been scary to see what I would be looking like what that on the equation. It was amazing! I was so happy to have experienced that (an on IMAX. For free! HA!) Also, my walk home was horrifying. I swear to God, I took four pictures of Final-Destination-possible-death-traps (it was fun, but not really). It was such a magical night, and even though this time I didn’t sit in the VIP area and make influencer friends, I felt like I had won my night and, most importantly, I had cheated death. In that movie seat. And on the four death traps I saw before getting home safely. Not this time, baby. Not this time.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Love Is A Decision

There I was, on my way back home from a dinner with a friend, contemplating life while watching the water rustling through soft waves in the lake. Sometimes your brain decides to work and you are invaded by a lightning bolt made of dopamine, and everything feels the perfect amount of right. While watching the dark of the night reflecting on the water, I was hit by the fact that this is my life: living in a big city in North America, learning what I love doing, with friends that care about me, and even with a small beach near my well-located apartment, there ready for me whenever I feel like connecting to the vastness of the ocean. That is my reality, and it is the one that I'd been wanting to have for a long time. It had never hit as hard as in that moment. Even though it was already late, I decided that I didn't want to go home quite yet. My day had already been filled with a walking excursion that introduced me to new places in the city and, while right now I was roaming around a familiar spot, I felt like I was creating a new habit. In the afternoons I would sit down to read a book while feeling the sand entering my white dirty shoes with the ocean wavering its sounds in the background. In the evenings, walks along the pier while playing This Love by Taylor Swift, feeling all the sadness that had once taken over me evaporating into thin air.

When my day started, however, I was somewhere else. Today I had my first day off in a week (during which I even had to work a 15-hour shift), so I decided to walk around Queen Street, something I wanted to do again ever since the night I wrote about in my Careful What You Wish For entry. In my possession was the book Close to Home by Michael Magee, which I'm finally close to finishing. I was looking for the perfect place to sit down and read it, and my main goal was a park somewhere along that long street, but the ones I came across weren't quite what I wanted. So I pulled up my phone and opened the Maps app to see if there was another option nearby — and there was: Riverdale Park. Even though nothing like the parks back home, it still reminded me of the times I would go to this one around Pinheiros in São Paulo every time I had to work in the office. I used to stay there for hours just reading, listening and singing along to music, and, of course, walking for hours on end.

This time I stick to reading with no AirPods on because I wanted to hear the real world around me, while also practicing an exercise my vocal professor asked me to do while on break from school (reading something out loud to myself). In between sips of water and bites of my favorite cookie — because for me reading needs to be aesthetic — I couldn't help but notice a group of friends together playing with toy guns. They had a small Captain America shield made of cardboard, and that would've been the sweetest thing if it wasn't for how one of the friends introduced himself to other people. He, with his orange sweater on top of a white shirt peeking out the collar, would shake hands and say his name to the person in the most enthusiastic way you can imagine — if you can imagine a twelve-year-old doing that. For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I couldn't have that. Back when I lived in Paris, I used to see friends hanging out together and I felt the hopelessness of not having any close friends now that I was living abroad. I also didn’t even feel like I was too ugly or too uninteresting to have someone like that enthusiastic boy in my life, as I had felt a few days ago when I saw this skater at the artificial beach on Waterfront. Sometimes my mind works in a way that likes to sink me into this depressive state of insecurity that screams at me that I will never be good-looking enough to have something with a good-looking guy. But not today, not today. I read my book, I let the grass touch my bare feet, and I felt the breeze getting colder as a gentle reminder to tell me that I should go home.

At that time I had said I would probably be able to join my friend and her mom for dinner, but I still wasn't sure if I would really make it because today I felt like having this "me" time and I didn't want to rush it. But when the gelid breath of a blue-wanting-to-turn-pink sky hit through my skinny jeans, I decided to find my way home in a different direction than I had come, and there I was, leaving the group of friends behind and this duo celebrating High Fidelity by Taylor Swift one day late (which still was better than me, who totally skipped this April 29th tradition). After crossing a bridge and then a small hill, I found myself in what became my new favorite part of Toronto: the west side of Riverdale Park. It had tiny little old houses made of dark brown brick and pointy archways surrounding it; a large space filled with loads of carefully treated trees and flowers that were blooming now with the start of spring; really (really) green grass and benches to sit down and appreciate the delicious weather we were finally in. The sun was shining, the park was almost empty, and everything just felt so calm and relaxing, making me have this insane urge to want to move to the area so badly, so peaceful it was. Spring is beautiful, indeed.

Before long, I reached the end of my journey through Winchester Street, the adjacent path I found myself on once leaving the park behind and, to my surprise, I was so close to home. Sometimes the way back to yourself can feel so long, but not today. It was almost 7 p.m. and my friend was texting me about the restaurant we would go to. Since I was surprisingly just a few minutes away from my apartment, I decided that I would go. She asked me for help deciding the restaurant and, while making the decision, I let her know that it would only take me a moment to get home, drop my backpack, and I would be on my way to the restaurant. Sometimes parts of me wondered what interesting thing I could possibly have to hold a conversation for 3 whole hours at a restaurant table, but soon enough 7 p.m. became 10 p.m. and I was leaving the restaurant with more than just my belly full. And with that, we're back to the beginning; back to the most important realization of the month: Love is a decision. Love is staying. Love is a poetry in motion, that takes me to places where I'm not living against the clock or in a transient state.

If once I was taking for granted the right things in the name of being so focused on “why the cool kids didn't want me around?”, now I was actively choosing to be the cool kid myself. I was actively deciding to go to many last-minute meetings on Sunday nights that I could despite the fact that I had work the next day. I was actively deciding to go to dinner parties and to stay around when almost everyone went home, to talk about deep stuff with people who know I care. Because my efforts weren't unilateral. This time around I didn't feel too much. This time around I didn't think I was too damaged. This time I was on a swingset, feeling that the true meaning of love was finally entering my lungs, making me able to breathe easy because I could be who I am and not feel like I was making mistakes at every step. And just in the same way I was choosing to stay, people were choosing to stay as well.

So alive in my own presence, the finitude of life was making my intrusive thoughts work hard to get me a bit far from the sidelines of the pier to prevent me from falling; and as I was so far from falling, I was much closer to feeling. The gratitude, the ache, the beauty, the longing, the uncertainty, the joy, the nostalgia... all swirling around me, reminding this one-in-a-seven-billion-too-self-absorbed-piece-of-bones that I am such an unique person. That's why it took me some time to find where I belong. That's why it's taking some time to find the final arms I will fall into. Wanting deeply, as I would learn tonight, is not the enemy of arrival. Especially when I'm day to day building a life that will allow many forms of love to come. The platonic was already there, in pictures I took and that were reposted, in invites that came without begging, in hugs that demonstrated that the function was finally fully ready to be wild because I had arrived at it. And now nothing in this world could ever make me want to leave, even now knowing the right time to go exists because it's also the right time to enter something that's better for me.

[gnvrh]

TheOldGabeOr... Dancing On Top Bar Tables

"Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ", I would say to myself during a Wednesday midnight, "I feel like I want to explode. I feel like I want to throw up. There's a lot going on inside my head right now". That spiral came when I was looking through pictures of old parties I used to go to at this bar mixed with nightclub called Dexter. It all started as I was writing the Seventeen Walking Broken Heart post and wanted to find a picture to illustrate that entry. Being the most recurrent place in it, I went on Google to find pictures from the nightclub Weekend; however, it was impossible. So I decided to head to Facebook and... no success. It's like anything that existed in the early 2010s never left a trace on the internet. But then... but then... I rediscovered Dexter's Pub Facebook page, and they had all the photos of all the parties I had been to there a few months later after Weekend closes its door.

My first reaction, as you would expect when one comes back to their teenage pictures, was, "Damn, I was so ugly back then", which is cruel considering I didn't change much. But truth be told, my hair was way too short (which is already a crazy statement if you know me today), and since I didn't wear glasses and my beard wasn't that present, something was definitely missing on my face. Still, I would reflect, as if that's the most important thing to think about, that back then I used to have really hot boyfriends. The one I had at the time had this sweet left-sided smile and sweet blond caramel hair (me, always a sucker for blond hair). Even though I felt like I wasn't the most attractive, I definitely had such a sex appeal back then, and that was one of the factors that made me almost throw up while seeing these old pictures. As I mentioned in my previous post, I know I wasn't all happy back then, but wow, I want that confidence back. That blindly convincing conviction that, even knowing I was insecure about a lot of stuff, I still was there getting all that I wanted. I wasn't model-gorgeous, but there was something about me that was different. The confidence of not doubting that I could make friends, that I was cared for and even a bit popular, and that I had the hottest boyfriends because I could pull that off.

Seeing so many proofs of happiness, even though fleeting and disguised by smiles curated for pictures we would then post on our perfect social medias, triggered in me a habit I'm trying to incorporate as much as I can: the habit of remembering the feeling of feeling good about something when I'm not feeling good about it anymore. I'm trying to remember more and more now how I felt beautiful even when I had nothing to prove it, as a way to believe I really am, in my own way. I'm trying to remember more and more now how brave I was and how unbothered and unfazed by a lot of things I was, as a way to claim that back. I know, still, that I won't feel as carefree as I used to feel back then, because all these years and pixels separating what's left of those nights from my skin-and-bone reality made me see and feel things I just can't forget and that made me who I am today; but at least I know that, if one day I felt beautiful and brave against all odds, I know I have it in me to feel it again, even if I have to fake it in the hope it becomes real.

Another thing that made me so self-aware of my life right now was how many friends I had back then. In one of the parties, I found many different graceful pictures with many different groups of people: my best childhood friend, my friends from my first uni (that I gave up after a few months), friends of my boyfriend, friends from the major I was currently in, and even friends I had made on the day. When you're young, it's easier to make friends (that much is true) but the underlying sensation was how I was popular in a way. Not that being popular was ever important to me (mostly because I never had to try to, honestly), but the feeling of always being a social butterfly that would fit in every crowd still pleases me to this day. That reminded me how people used to tell me how I used to light up any room I would walk into and, again, I wonder where all that confidence went. Of course, I remember how it was torn down because it's forever documented in this song I wrote called Your Way To Handle Things. I will never not mention how the experience that made me write this song traumatized the shit out of me. And now it hits close to home because, until a few weeks ago, I couldn't help but believe in the feeling of feeling ostracized and forgotten by people I really wanted to invite me into their lives. It's like I'm old news and a bad joke dressed up as the guy that thinks he can still light up the room. I don't believe in that anymore.

In those pictures, many parts of my journey through life were immortalized, but also other people's journeys. Like this beautiful guy I met at a Halloween party; in one of the photos of an earlier one, he was with his boyfriend, and they looked so happy together. Fast forward to the Halloween pictures, where he was then alone, with an easiness that wouldn't denounce his boyfriend had just died. I will never forget that. Or how I crossed paths on this December 27th party with a spiked-headed guy that would become my boyfriend a few months later; or a girl who would be in the same class as me in the major I would only start almost two years later. The past and the future, all present in random nights. Nights where I didn't need to get drunk or high to enjoy it. Nights where having someone to call mine didn't feel as I planned. Nights where the timeline of my future first boyfriend were starting to get intertwined with mine.

He would go to Dexter's parties with this hot and confident guy I became so insecure about once we started dating, but back when I didn't even know that that place (or even they) existed. He then would vanished from the pictures right when I started hanging out there. Suddenly, he's back again, but now with me. One of the reasons that discovering these snapshots felt so cathartic was because I knew that he and I had taken one there that I was so happy about. I remember posting it on my Instagram with the chorus of Style by Taylor Swift as the caption, but ever since we broke up and I deleted the picture, I had never seen it again, which I regretted ever since he left. Through the many albums documenting the golden paths of our lives through the never-ending lenses of a camera made to capture the liveness that exists in being young, drunk, and dumb, there we were again on a party held on December 12th. Now, ten years later, finding this photographic record felt as though it was waiting, patiently, for me to come back to it, to show me what we were. Me, with a T-shirt with flowering letters spelling "Pool Party 1982", my recently acquired fake glasses, and an anchor necklace that, although never stopped me from living with my head up in the clouds, made me sink our relationship. Him, with a pink T-shirt, a crooked smile made out of tooth braces, and a necklace of a world globe, as though he always knew he would leave the country and explore other continents. I wonder if he knew that back then, while with my arms around his waist and his arms on my shoulders, that we would both end up doing the same escapism move on a promising December in 2023. I bet he did. Even back then, he knew he didn't want to stay around our small town, and me, with all my selfishness, anxiety, and attachment issues, forsook him for it. It was the downfall of our relationship, and I know I didn't know better. I know my expectations were over the roof, just like the water that drowned me out. But there's not a single day I don't think of writing him in the hope he tells me that he knows it as well — that we were just two teenagers learning how to be in love and that all my love was just trying to get the best of me.

All that I can think about when going back to these salt waves was how life felt simple back then. How we were just living and existing in the only place we felt we could be ourselves. How mistakes felt part of life and not a death sentence. How knowledge wasn't the curse that once felt like blissfulness. Nostalgia is a mind's trick, I'll always say that. And I'll always remind myself that I'm mostly romanticizing everything and not remembering the pain (even though I remember all of the hurt of all the breaks that came before). But even so, I know it was different. And even though the changes of today's life are for the better, and that the ones who didn't live in the same timeline as me will see my "hows" as a stubborn way to minimize today's justness and awareness, still it won't change the fact that today we're overstimulated by everything, for worse or for better. We didn't have that many things that we have right now, and I definitely didn't have as many problems in my head as I have right now because of that.

That realization, while texting my old friends because I just couldn't carry all these lightnings of a past life alone, made me consider what I can cut off from my life to make me feel less anxious about being a human being on my first (allegedly) try at life. And now I want to live more because the past is a place I like to come back to, because it reminds me that I have lived intensely; but to be able to remember that, I have to keep living today intensely, and that's how the cycle will never end — and I think that's a good thing. So don't mind me for having a smile on my face with these new old pictures saved on my computer. They made me realize how my life is amazing. And even better: they made me realize, more and more, how motivated I am to just live.

[gnvrh]

TheOldGabeOr… Seventeen Walking Broken Heart

On a random day a few years ago, someone said I was a walking broken heart. It didn't come as a compliment, but ever since that day, I decided to carry this title proudly, because it was true. Back in the day, I would find any chance to be sad. There was something so powerful about being heartbroken, but still hopeful. It felt like a warm and safe vest I would wear during the winter times inside my heart to justify my misfortune and bad decisions, and I would never take it off because I'd rather be protected than naked. Nonetheless, as I grew up, I realized that I didn't want to always be sad, so I set fire to most of the pairs I had of my protective vest. Killing that part of me was the hardest thing I ever did, and, even though you can't avoid being sad, you can choose what to be sad for and for how long. You can choose to use it as a tool to evolve, and not as a drug to feel the highs of being miserable.

Even so, the aesthetic of being broken-hearted never really left me, as you would expect from someone aesthetically driven like me. So, naturally, I keep coming back to this idea, and the songs that remind me of it. Whenever I think about what albums would define the very essence of this part of my soul, a simple number two would come immediately to my mind: Animal by Kesha and Avril Lavigne by Avril Lavigne. However, as I was going through memory lane, I couldn't help but think of other records that marked pages of my life that I tore out of anger but never got the courage to burn.

The list you see here is the compilation of all these albums. Far from being an ultimate record about the youth that lies in me, this list, at least, has every album that shaped me into the walking broken heart this old crush of mine said I was (and that I wish I could thank him for). Before I'm way too old to write about this, here's every scar, blood, and vein of my seventeen walking broken heart that loves to hang on parking lots and gas stations.

Favorite Lyrics (Tell Me Lies): I don't want to know ⬩ If I've kissed your lips for the last time ⬩ Please, don't say if it's so ⬩ Tell my heart it's not goodbye ⬩ Do this one thing for me ⬩ Make up some stupid story ⬩ Tonight, it's alright ⬩ Keep your truth and tell me lies;

Favorite Lyrics (What If): What if I need you, baby? ⬩ Would you even try to save me ⬩ Or would you find some lame excuse to never be true? ⬩ What if I said I loved you? ⬩ Would you be the one to run to ⬩ Or would you watch me walk away without a fight? ⬩⬩ Every time I speak, you try and stop me ⬩ Cause every little thing I say is wrong ⬩ You say you're noticing, but you never see ⬩ This is who I really am that you can believe ⬩ Makes me wanna know right now ⬩ If it's me you'll live without ⬩ Or would you change your mind?;

Favorite Lyrics (Me Without You): When everything falls apart ⬩ And it seems like the world is crashing at my feet ⬩ You like me the best, when I'm a mess ⬩ When I'm my own worst enemy ⬩ You make me feel beautiful ⬩ When I have nothing left to prove ⬩ And I can't imagine, how I'd make it through ⬩ There's no me without you;

Going chronologically, Guilty Pleasure by Ashley Tisdale marked afternoons at my best friend's house when life was all about going to school and hanging out at her room for the whole afternoon. We would talk about not only Ashley Tisdale but also Britney Spears and Hilary Duff, while making extensive photoshoots on an old digital camera and putting too many effects on the pictures afterward using PhotoScape. In the meantime, we would stroll in the park of our city and I would see her going insane over a boy.

She had this intense love going on, one that I always lived vicariously through. She would appear at his door proclaiming her love for him, and I would listen to all the back-and-forth stories as she would write on her Tumblr about the rush of dopamine only he could provoke in her. She was not only my best friend (and still is to this day), but also my first inspiration for what I am today, as I write my drops of dopamine on a Tumblr, with my biggest proof of love being to have someone at my doorstep, ready to live a chaotic back-and-forth type of love with me.

The most memorable boy obsession I had was with this crush that I had on 8th grade and that I would follow through our small city streets to see him going to work or to strike up a conversation to tell him that I was there if he ever needed help with math. And I would go insane when he wrote something in my yearbook. And I would make video montages of his pictures. Gosh, I guess I'm not that original after all. There's no guilt involved in how this album feels so important to me, even now.

Favorite Lyrics (Blind): I'm sick and tired of the mess you made me ⬩ You're never gonna catch me cry ⬩ You must be blind if you can't see ⬩ You'll miss me 'til the day you die ⬩ Without me, you're nothing ⬩ You must be blind if you can't see ⬩ You'll miss me 'til the day you die;

Favorite Lyrics (Dancing With Tears In My Eyes): I'm dancing with tears in my eyes ⬩ Just fighting to get through the night ⬩ I'm losing it ⬩ With every move, I die ⬩ I'm faded, I'm broken inside ⬩ I've wasted the love of my life ⬩ I'm losing it ⬩ With every move, I die;

Kesha's Animal — the first original Seventeen Walking Broken Heart inspirational album — is the perfect definition of being young, drunk, and high. Things I never was when I was 17. It's true that I became unstoppable once I turned 18 and discovered nightclubs, but I don't remember getting drunk all the time (if anything, I remember feeling very sleepy at one party at my Guilty Pleasure best friend's house where we would drink a very suspicious blue drink), nor high (I was so afraid of doing anything of the sort, afraid I would get addicted, so I definitely never did anything related to that until a few years ago). Apart from that... man, I was living the life.

When I was old enough to go out, I did it repeatedly. I still wonder how my mom never grounded me for leaving the house at 11 p.m. on a Saturday and returning at 9 a.m. the other day. The place I used to go every weekend was actually called Weekend (and to become even more meta, the pregame used to be me jamming to this song called The Weekend by The Wanted). There were nights where I would ask my famous-singer friend to pick me up in her red car because I was way too drunk (yeah, I think I used to get drunk after all) and feeling like people would start taking advantage of me or that my phone was in danger of being stolen. All that thrill and excitement would repeat itself weekend after weekend, with nigths where I would walk to the nightclub when it was dead dark and there wasn't a single soul in the streets without a care in the world.

For me, this Kesha album encapsulates all that effervescent existence of never wanting the night to end and hitting highs of life trough a rollercoster, while going from "I'm kissing a lot of different guys at this party" to "I'm only kissing this one guy for the whole night straight" to "I wish I was kissing that other guy that I'm obsessed with for no particular reason". Still, it's funny that the songs I chose as my defining favorites from the album are the sad ones (that was always me, I'm afraid). As I mentioned before, something in me loved being sad and, even though I also mentioned growing out of it, it was still my reality back in 2010. I was discovering how it felt to feel like everything was soul-crashing. I was discovering how it felt to finally go out and live something worth living for. I didn't have a plan, I didn't want to be something, I was just there, in line for the party wondering how many friends I would make and how many boys I would kiss. This nightclub will become something important throughout this post, I see it now.

Favorite Lyrics (Stay): If you ask me, I will stay, I will stay, always stay ⬩ I never wanna lose you ⬩ And if I had to, I would choose you ⬩ So stay, please always stay ⬩ You're the one that I hold onto ⬩ Cause my heart would stop without you;

Favorite Lyrics (Scars): If I could have just one night to be with you ⬩ To make it right ⬩ To what we were and what we are is hidden in the scars ⬩ If I could take you there ⬩ I won't let go of this, I swear ⬩ You won't have to wonder what we are ⬩ Cause you won't have to ever look too far; it's in the scars;

Favorite Lyrics (Take Me Along): I, I don't understand why you're leaving me ⬩ I, I don't understand how without you, I can't breathe ⬩ Please don't, don't leave me here ⬩ Take my hand, I'm bleeding tears ⬩ I don't understand why you can't take me with you;

Watching the premiere of the music video for the song Can't Be Tamed changed the chemistry of my brain. Back when I had a mental list of albums that marked my life (which not only included Guilty Pleasure and Goodbye Lullaby from this list, but also Speak Now by Taylor Swift), this record followed me through my night walks from the public library to my place, where I carried a burned CD with the music video so I could watch it over and over again once I got home.

What's interesting to notice is that back then I never had an aesthetic; I was just living whatever version of me I felt like living. I wasn't too aware. For an album where Miley rebelled herself (and from an era where Tumblr was at its peak), I never got the desire to enhance a personality type, not like today where it feels like all I want is to feel aesthetic (which, believe me, is fun and fine and I try to do it all the time).

When it comes to memories that this album brings, however, in all fairness, I don't think it really marked anything specific in my life. There's not a song that reminds me of a specific boy I was in (or out of) love with, for example, which is funny to take into account, because surely there must have been someone I was interested in, but nothing too remarkable, I guess (although I can remember some skater guy I was friends with and this girl friend of mine who walked home from work with me listening to songs on her iPod). Nevertheless, I can't forget how it was part of the soundtrack of my life when it was released. Sometimes music doesn't need a reason.

Favorite Lyrics (I Love You): You're so beautiful ⬩ But that's not why I love you ⬩ And I'm not sure you know ⬩ That the reason I love you is you ⬩ Being you, just you ⬩ Yeah, the reason I love you ⬩ Is all that we've been through ⬩ And that's why I love you;

Favorite Lyrics (Everybody Hurts): Everybody hurts some days ⬩ Yeah, we all feel pain ⬩ Everybody feels this way but it'll be okay ⬩ Can't somebody take me away to a better place? ⬩ Everybody feels this way;

Favorite Lyrics (It's Not Enough): It's not enough, it's not enough ⬩ To give me what it is I want ⬩ It's not enough, it's not enough ⬩ To get me everything I need ⬩ And I, I wish it was ⬩ I think it's time to give this up;

Favorite Lyrics (For Real): I'm for real, are you for real? ⬩ I can't help myself, it's the way I feel ⬩ When you look me in the eyes like you did last night ⬩ I can't stand to hear you say goodbye ⬩ Well it feels so right, cause it feels so right ⬩ Just to have you standing by my side ⬩ So don't let me go, cause you have my soul ⬩ And I just wanted you to know;

For me, this is the best Avril Lavigne album. The stripped-back songs highlighted the singer-songwriter that was starting to be born in me ever since I became a Taylor Swift fan a few years prior to this release. Sitting on the corner of the street of my neighborhood, this time I was crushing on a boy who had the same name as me. I used to jam to songs like Stop Standing There hoping that he would finally see how into him I was.

This album also marked the year I became friends with a rising singer in my city (the one who would pick me up in her red car from parties where I was too drunk). We bonded over Taylor Swift, of course, but she was also a longtime Avril Lavigne fan, who, just like me, loved this raw version of Avril. Even though this album marked another boy-crazy phase of my life with the crush-with-the-same-name-as-me, the memories that envelop me at every guitar string here are of the reality of being a teenager who had too much nerve to be truly, completely, and crazily in love with a guy, doing crazy things and writing crazy confessions of love.

If there's one thing I aim to get back when revisiting these old memories, it’s not the hope to feel all those things again, but to remember how it used to feel to be brave and unfazed. I was just thinking how everything really felt simple back then, with not as many social-bombarding things blowing up in our faces. With not such a thing called awareness of traumatic experiences that will forever shape you for the worse. Little old me didn't care about falling in love with guys, saying weird things to my friends, and wearing questionable clothes. I was just living... just living. If there's something I crave right now, is to go back to that feeling.

Favorite Lyrics (Want You Back): Boy, you can say anything you wanna ⬩ I don't give a "Shh", no one else can have ya ⬩ I want you back, I want you back, Wan-want you, want you back ⬩ I broke it off thinking you'd be crying ⬩ Now I feel like "Shh", lookin' at you flying ⬩ I want you back, I want you back, ⬩ Wan-want you, want you back ⬩⬩ I thought you'd still be mine ⬩ When I kissed you goodbye ⬩ And you might be with her but I still had you first;

Favorite Lyrics (Beautiful People): Cause it's beautiful people like you ⬩ Who get whatever they want ⬩ And it's beautiful people like you ⬩ Who suck the life right outta my heart ⬩ And it's beautiful people like you ⬩ Who make me cry ⬩ Cause nobody else could be nearly as cruel as you;

Back to the best friend I mentioned when talking about Guilty Pleasure, this album also reminds me a bit of my moments with her, because I would walk to her house bopping to this album. From all the records in this list so far, this one definitely has one of the songs that really shaped the way I think about some things today, and that song is Beautiful People.

Truth be told, I was never the good-looking guy in the bunch. Sure, I wasn't all that ugly, but my beauty was never the standard one. Still, I would find myself dating cute guys and being some sort of popular, but even so, there were things — and people — I wouldn't get. And it may sound defensive to blame the beauty of these people I didn't "get" as the reason I didn't "get" them, but I think something spoke to me, back in 2011, about how, sometimes, all you have to do is just be beautiful and life will be easier for you.

When I say it shaped my way of seeing some aspects of life, it's because to this day I still get the sense that, sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I'll always be behind some people just because of the way they look — especially in the artistic world, where the way you look can sell you even more than your talent. And when you're beautiful you have options, so you can feel tempted to not hold on to things as strongly and treat them uncarefully; but when it comes to me, I could never do that. Things in my life are too precious to me and I've always been the one who cared and felt too much, and that's why sometimes meeting nonchalantism felt cruel.

I'm not going to lie, there were times I wished I was cruel, or that I was more gorgeous, but when I think about it and look back, I realize that these things were never really important to me, because I never acted on them. Sure, I have always been too fashionable and of course I would watch Blair from Gossip Girl and wish to be like her, but I know I could never. I'd rather be beautiful on the inside than on the outside purely.

Favorite Lyrics (17): We were on top of the world, back when I was your girl ⬩ We were living so wild and free ⬩ Acting stupid for fun, all we needed was love ⬩ That's the way it's supposed to be ⬩ We were running red lights, we were going all night ⬩ Didn't care about anything ⬩ Cause it was you and me, we were living the dream ⬩ As we were seventeen;

It doesn't seem like a big jump from 2011 to 2012, but if the previous albums were about hanging with my best friend at her house, or just walking street corners or squares around my neighborhood, this 2012 marked my first year in UNI. It was around this time that I met the guy I talked about in my Waters of August post, but truly part of this album reminds me of my very first "boyfriend" — the one Erick would tell me was not right for me.

Although I didn't point out these songs as my favorites (just because 17 is the literal definition of what a Seventeen Walking Broken Heart vibe would be), Here's to Never Growing Up and Rock N Roll have the biggest memory imprint in my head from this album. The first is obvious by its title, but also because it's one of the songs I recall so vividly hearing in a bad remix at the nightclub I mentioned before called Weekend. I can close my eyes and recollect this picture a photographer took of me, my boyfriend at the time, and our mutual friends losing our minds to this song. While the latter would have me remembering strutting the corridors of my university mouthing this song as if I was the only person in the building. It felt badass in my perspective, but I'm sure it looked weird on the outside — but hey, I was having fun.

Naturally, 17 became, just like Beautiful People, another song that shaped my way of thinking about life. I was all about feeling forever wild and free, and acting stupid just for fun. Here the aesthetic of youth began to take a shape I never seemed to shake off — when you think about working at record stores (which I still want to do, maybe mixing it with a thrift store because they're just as cool) and kissing a guy you like in the parking lot (which I actually did and, let me tell you, it was intense). Before Style by Taylor Swift would even exist, I was there growing up by a song that recalled an intense type of love that didn't end well but that was still alive in some way.

The song, and the album in general, is about this feeling of living life to the fullest without thinking about past mistakes or even consequences, but the undertone can change a bit if I bring back the nights where I would abuse the hell out of being an adult. If at the beginning I mentioned going to these parties with my boyfriend, now I remember being single without him. I remember going to these parties with a group of friends that had a dancer boy I was in love with, but who was in love with someone else. I remember standing on the upper floor near the cashiers, watching this guy I worked with sitting down in the middle of the dance floor seats all alone, while I remembered how complicated we were and how he could've been with me but he didn't choose to. Man, even with the turmoils of being a teenager, I can't say I didn't enjoy my partying era — and wait until I write a post about Dexter Pub.

Favorite Lyrics (C'Mon): Come on cause I know what I like ⬩ And you're looking just like my type ⬩ Let's go for it just for tonight ⬩ Come on, come on, come on ⬩ Now don't even try to deny ⬩ We're both going home satisfied ⬩ Let's go for it, just for tonight ⬩ Come on, come on, come on;

Favorite Lyrics (Thinking of You): I heard our song on the radio ⬩ And I'd see your face everywhere I go ⬩ I thought I'd call just to let you know ⬩ I've been thinking of you, thinking of you ⬩ But now my song's on the radio ⬩ And you see my face everywhere you go ⬩ I thought I'd call just to let you know ⬩ I've been thinking of you, thinking of you;

Favorite Lyrics (Last Goodbye): Oh, how we lost our minds ⬩ When we fell in love that night ⬩ I never thought that I would ever leave your side ⬩ Oh, how we lost our minds ⬩ When we fell in love that night ⬩ Promise me you won't cry ⬩ This is our last goodbye;

The last album on the list came around the same time as the previous Avril album. So much so that many of the memories are intertwined and they even mix up with each other. For example, one of the most memorable songs from the album for me is Last Goodbye, which I remember walking the corridors of my university listening to while feeling sad about everything I was losing at the end of the relationship with my boyfriend at the time. I can close my eyes and still picture the white-walled halls I would walk, the old Instagram filters I would use on the pictures I took of stacked-up chairs on my iPod, and how I made friends with people that I still love to death to this day.

By the end of 2012 I was not only working in the company I would stay with for the next ten plus years, but I was having those forever-shaping experiences of being young and reckless (and anxious, because why not), like having this affair with the worker crush I mentioned during in the Avril Lavigne album that would include kissing in the bathroom and going to his place while he was dating someone else. He always had this sense of chosing someone else over me, but trying to stay in my life. He would chose someone who felt more mature, but then I would see their relationship falling apart. Then he would chose someone around my age, but cheating him with me because he wanted his boyfriend to notice something was wrong and break up, instead of him break up.

Even though Warrior didn't make its mark on what I became as a person the way Animal did, to this day it still has songs that follow my path, reminding me of good times. Times I know I wasn't particularly all happy, but that I remember fondly. From picturing myself famous and rich, telling people who deserted me that they lost the big game, just as Thinking of You does; to listening to C'mon at a Taylor Swift party back in 2017 and feeling so happy about it because I never thought I would hear it in a club; or manifesting how my life in Canada would look like while still walking the streets of France in 2023 — the messy and dirty party essence of the first Kesha album and now this one was something that I always wanted to linger onto just a little bit longer.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Sunday Night Adventures

ㅤㅤ🎧 Playing: The Night Is Still Young by Nick Minaj ㅤㅤ🧭 Map: 43.643290 -79.412130; 43.645481 -79.413887; 43.649295 -79.394998; 43.648288 -79.399592; 43.648760 -79.397673; ㅤㅤ📺 Watching: The White Lotus Season 3

Lately, I’ve been trying to find softness in a city that doesn’t slow down. And somehow, Sunday nights with my friends are teaching me how. One of the things I've been promising myself to do is to come here and write about something positive. As a person who finds that the best way to cope with sadness is to talk/talk/talk and write/write/write, I use this space as my aesthetically ranting escapism (seriously, I lost count how many times I opened my main page and just stare at it, so beautiful I think it is). However, it's getting old, and I realized that even though I had hopes that writing about how things are impacting my life would show people why I am the way that I am, I reckoned that nobody is paying attention and that is a blessing. At the end of the day I was putting too much energy into the past and not forgiving it. I'm asking too much of myself while trying to convince everyone that my feelings are valid, when in reality I was actually trying to convince myself. For that reason, I've been trying in the last few posts to change my narrative a little bit, trying to take out some of the weight I've been carrying in my words and making them less harsh. In the hope that that would make me see that I do have a lot to be grateful for. We've been talking a lot about being grateful in class, and I remember how I used to go to bed every day and name something I was grateful for, but I lost that habit. I came to learn that we always focus on what we don't have because it's easier, so I wanted to take some time to focus on what I have. I have a place to call home that I love coming back to after a long day (just to sit down in a clean space to eat food and watch something comforting on the TV). I have food in my fridge. I have sources of income that, even though they don't make me rich, allow me to pay my rent. And I have friends. Friends that will make me go out on Sunday nights to do crazy stuff (while I know damn well that I have classes Monday at 9 a.m.). With that said, I wanted to take my time to write about two specific Sundays I had with them.

The first happened a few weeks ago, on march 30rd. Like most of our plans, it brewed on the day. I was working until late, but when the group chat started to burn up with plans, all my tiredness transformed into excitement (and fear of missing out, of course), and soon enough my plans of staying in and sleeping went out the window as I left work and rushed home to shower and get ready. Once ready, there I was, almost 10 p.m., catching a streetcar to go to Pennies to meet the gang. The place was so lovely, and we had shots, drinks, and food. We took a lot of pictures, and we laughed about life. Sitting under the neon-pink light, I counted my blessings and made my friends laugh when I came back from the washroom taking the kitchen route and appearing on the other side of the table just because I was curious to know what was at the back of the place. Then we left, and one would think that we were ready to leave, but we weren't. We lit up some cigarettes and, together with the drunkenness, we got high. In that moment, I could almost see myself from a distance, like I was watching an indie movie forming outside my frame. The aesthetic of standing outside that bar smoking with laughing friends made me feel like I was in one of those movies, and that's the best way I have to describe when I'm having the best moments in my life. The credits seemed to be closer, as we were getting ready to call it a day and walk some of our friends home.

On the way, however, we found ourselves at the entrance of Trinity Bellwoods Park, (mind you, it was 1 a.m. by this point), and I had the brilliant idea to say that I was curious to visit it (but I meant during the day!). They wanted to go at that moment, though. During the walk, I took the picture of this post, and once again, I felt like I was living inside motion pictures. I stayed behind and watched this unlikely group of friends coming together on a chilly Toronto night. We were once all strangers, a few of us from different continents, and yet we found ourselves there, at this same time and space, and we decided, collectively and every single day, that we would stay and build this. I felt so lucky.

However, the peace and laughter and sense of belonging took a serious turn when The Perks of Being a Wallflower became The Blair Witch Project as we were getting to a dark passage of the park. "That's how horror movies start", I would say, while trying to convince everyone to get the fuck out of there because walking in a dark park at night would never sound like a good idea. Nobody listened to me and there we went through dark paths while I was so sure we would get attacked and die and parish. My friends were making jokes about things hidden behind trees, and I even tried to laugh it off when we crossed paths with an abandoned house because it was an experience after all. When we finally found ourselves out of the park, we were alive and well and probably ready to finally call it a day. Then, we came across a 7-Eleven which had a parking lot. Again, movie aesthetics!!!! We took a lot of pictures under the sign, then pretending to be drinking the gasoline from the fuel nozzle, and we promised to go back there during the summer to get drunk while sitting on the curb of the parking lot. That day, I crossed more than just an item off the "Adventure List" I have on my Notes app. From that day on, The Night Is Still Young by Nicki Minaj became, in all silly seriousness, my jam for us.

Fast forward to this Sunday. Again, it all started with a message in the group chat, and there I was again, on my closing shift at work, counting the minutes to leave. Just like the other Sunday, I had plans to stay in, paint my nails, watch something, and go to sleep early, but I couldn't say no to a new meeting. After putting my new board on the wall (damaging a pan in the process) and eating something real quick, I jumped on the streetcar to meet them at Rivioli, a place to play pool (I don't know how to play pool). In between time-lapse videos and 0.5x photos, I stayed sober most of the night. Last time we hung out (a Saturday), we went to this incredible jazz place called Dom Traberna (seriously, amazing!), but I had too much to drink and to smoke and ended up in a life crisis (which is not something positive, so I won't dwell on it). I even got competitively aggressive when one of my girlfriends from the other team broke the rule and pocketed one of the pool balls with her hands. That moment reminded me of the Saturday when I was out of my mind and saying sorry for being so annoying and making mistakes. All the anxiety I have been facing came rushing in again, taking over my body, making me afraid I would become someone they would detest and not want to have around anymore. I don't understand how I became this fragile. One of my boy friends even told me the other day that I was too soft when we were talking about how I'll move to New York in a few years. They were telling me how I needed to be more "mean" to be a New Yorker, and that is so true. Not that I need to be mean per se, but I need to be tougher. I need to believe that drunk people say and do stupid shit and that doesn't mean the end of the world, especially with people that love me and know me. I need to believe that I'm a person with a good heart who will get one or two things wrongs and not be held against it. I don’t know how I became this soft. But maybe softness is what’s saving me.

When we left the pool place, we stopped at Cameron's (which I thought was a person at first), and there was live music going on. Once again, it felt like a movie (specifically this one called Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist). As it was getting late, I made peace with the fact I had to leave, even when the conversation took a fun turn about our playlists and their silly names. With a heart in shambles for leaving them behind, I forced myself out of the fear of missing out by thinking how badly I wanted to go back home to eat Oreos with milk and rest for my final week at school. They stayed at Cameron's a little longer, and it seemed like they found a park where one of my friends would lay down on the grass for a reason that I won't know because I wasn't there, but that I wouldn't question because he’s always falling anyway. It was fun and precious. As I was scrolling trough the pictures of bathroom selfies and food in pockets, I smiled at my screen, so happy that I had them. Part of me still mourns the friendships I didn't get to keep, but just this time, I will be selfish and tell myself it's their loss. At the end of the day, my aesthetic-movie life is coming to... life, and I finally have the people that will say "yes" when I say "let's go". No matter the time or day.

[gnvrh]

PlaylistOr... What a Nervous Breakdown Feels Like

As I lay on the floor of my apartment, sobbing my will to live out, I stared at the complete desolation of my soul with a fortress of pillows and blankets around me, to this beaten-up soldier from yet another war. Everything was building up to the moment where I wouldn't be able to find a single strength to keep me going, and now it had finally caught up to me. With what I most enjoyed contented least, I didn't walk out the door to do what I have been dreaming my whole life. Instead, the keys stayed hanging on the inside side of the door, because, even with the best of intentions, I screwed everything up again. I damned all my plans for one more minute (or hour) of the sweetest taste of despair in sweaty clothes. All tales have a beginning and an ending. Unfortunately, it might not be a pleasant one, but this is mine.

Favorite Lyrics: Taking my heart on the road ⬩ There's no other cars on the street ⬩ She said, "Leave it on drive, as long as it leads to me" ⬩ Straight to your door like before ⬩ And under your mat is a key ⬩ She said "I'll leave it outside, as long as it needs to be, as long as it leads to me";

It all started with the endless possibility of a night walk. Exploring the long Queen Street, I found myself walking and walking for hours on end until I realized my phone was about to die and my feet were about to disintegrate. To the sound of this song, the nostalgia I felt with the beat that inevitably reminds me of 2003 for no particular reason, came back to my mind as it wandered back to the nights I would walk Paulista Avenue for the thousandth time, feeling like it was the first. More and more, I miss that place, and I yearn to get back to the state of mind I had back then when I could do whatever I wanted and feel truly fulfilled. It's true… you don't remember the bad parts — and I sure as hell might have been in pain back then —, but now it feels a less impactful and life defying kind of pain.

While I know nothing will ever be the way it was, even if I decided to hop on a plane and go back right at this instant, that still scares me. I'm not stuck, but I'm in the long hall that I've built for myself, and the only path is... forward. As long as it leads to me, the real "me" I'm supposed to be, then I'm fine. Until then, I'll finally take pictures of myself and feel good about it, just to post them and see that almost none of my fair weather friends would like them, and see the sadness of it make me get home and call an old problem to give me yet another reassurance that I will always go back to what's damaging me because it’s the only safe place to be. Because I just don’t know sit too long with a good feeling. But there I sat, for too long, with my dejection, as my mind went blank. All I could feel was my good friend rejection lurking in the shadows, and even though I'm sure I had a lot to think about, for long minutes, I thought of nothing.

Favorite Lyrics: How does it feel? ⬩ I hope one day you heal ⬩ How does it feel to be forgotten? ⬩ Forgotten;

Snapping out of my trance, I went back to my favorite song on Selena's new album. Back to the Friday it was released, How Does It Feel to Be Forgotten sounded more like an introspective self-talk to a version of me, both from the past and the future, when I wondered, hopefully, how must it feel to be forgotten because I didn't know, since I had never been. Instead, the one being forgotten was the silly little boys who would steal me in corridors, but that now I didn’t even look in the eyes, because sometimes being cruel not only is necessary but it feels good. Something about finding the wholeness within the song in verses such as "I hope one day you heal" made me feel optimistic about the fact that, one day, I would really feel like I wasn't seeing life from behind proscenium curtains. It was a poetic sensation that kept me going.

Now, however, I was actually the one feeling forgotten. I was actually the one Selena was singing to. Forgotten, never healed, and alone. I couldn't bring myself to remember my latest Friday night when I went to a party with my friend and danced all night, getting drunk, high, and taking aesthetic pictures. All I could remember were the fingers I brushed and the backs I felt, which never translated into a darker corner type of chaos. All I could remember were the friends I wanted so badly to keep, but that I flunked with the mistakes that I wasn't allowed to make. All that I could remember was how I was only making things worse, even when trying to do the right thing. I hate to have the hope that soon it will be summer and it will all be over because I don't want it to be. And I hate the feeling that I need to convince myself that I will find people who will save a seat for me because the seats I'm not sitting in were the ones I prayed for ages ago but that I burned down.

Yet, I survived through the night and dreamed my way out of those thoughts in tiring hours that felt like seconds. Little did I know that I would wake up to the final crack that would dismantle my broken castle. Something so silly I don't even dare to confess. My cup was full of disappointments, new fears, and guilt, so the last drop drowned the wooden floor, and the dreadful feeling I had months ago became real. It's like they say: if it feels like a trap, you're already in one. It only took me several months to realize it.

Favorite Lyrics (Best): Cause look at me, I'm alone, sitting here, staying home ⬩ All of my self-control kinda got difficult, but I deserve it though, I deserve it though ⬩ You were there all the time ⬩ You're the worst of my crimes ⬩ You fell hard, I thought, "Good riddance" ⬩⬩ I never was the best to you ⬩ I never was the best to you ⬩ I never was, I never was;

Favorite Lyrics (Difficult): Oh, I know, spiraling is miserable ⬩ I should probably go back home ⬩ Why does that feel difficult, difficult? ⬩ Oh, I hope, I wake up invisible ⬩ I'd be someone no one knows ⬩ I guess I'm just difficult, difficult ⬩ I've been drinking and staying up too late ⬩ Reliving bad decisions ⬩ I thought eventually, my ranting here would fix it ⬩ I really think sometimes there's something that I'm missing;

It may sound absurd, but lately, I've been needing to remind myself that I have Gracie Abrams songs to listen to. That's because she was such a part of my life last year, but now I'm so caught up in other artists, like Tate McRae, that I don't see myself going back to her as often. Also, because she reminds me of painful moments. That's why, I thought, it would be the best idea to listen to her while I started to get colour back in my face and decided to leave my apartment for a walk. Weeks ago, I was obsessed with In Between, and now I was bouncing back to her debut album, Good Riddance, which I’ve been diving into in smaller doses, whenever a new sadness urged me to find a new soundtrack.

Naturally, I found something while walking down the busy streets of the city, where I had yet to discover the perfect spot to always come back to. At first, Best caught my attention with its self-deprecation. How could it not? I was all alone, with no self-control, committing the worst crime I could have ever committed. Of course, it was never the case of blaming the other part, and I let them know that in the hopes of soothing their minds while mine raced laps on a rusty nail path. The worst part, though, is that I know that this would have happened no matter the subject, because the control of the gun was always in my suicidal hands. And as always, I'm missing social cues and the shot at the starting line.

Yet, it was when Difficult came on that I felt the bullet piercing through. It was difficult being me, especially for others. It was difficult to find strength to go anywhere, even home. How many times have I wished I was invisible, or someone no one else knew? How many times have I been drinking and staying up late because midnights have become my afternoons in the graveyard my ghosts haunt me? If there was anyone rooting for me, I would have danced to the song, but that isn’t the case. I'm so hard on myself, I know. It's a habit I will break; but not today. Especially now that I know that changing to a new place where no one knows you doesn't make any difference if you are, still... you.

Favorite Lyrics: I'll sit and watch your car burn ⬩ With the fire that you started in me ⬩ But you never came back to ask it out ⬩ Go ahead and watch my heart burn ⬩ With the fire that you started in me ⬩ But I'll never let you back to put it out ⬩⬩ When you call my name ⬩ Do you think I'll come running? ⬩ You never did the same ⬩ So good at giving me nothing ⬩ When you close your eyes, do you picture me? ⬩ When you fantasize, am I your fantasy? ⬩ Now you know, now I'm free;

Things started to feel more bearable as the days went by even though parts of me still wanted to hold on to the brokenness because, the longer it took, the more justifiable it became. But the guilt of skipping classes, getting in late, or leaving the room in the middle of a silly exercise made me realize how much I was missing. After a long talk with someone who actually cared, the wound was closed with a thick black thread, showing that the result of many years of battle had finally put this soldier down — not killed, but yet, once more, for better or worse, aware. And as much as it hurts me, there's a crack of hope while I sit down on the floor of a yellowed room that asks me to smile while I'm away from the shiny furniture I could never fit in because of my patched old cushions.

It was on a Sunday when I discovered Watch, and the bridge stuck in me. Once again, words of pointed blame helped me go through poignant blames I try not to appoint in real life. Instead, I keep it inside, swaying up and down with this anger many have already pointed out that I have and that I know I do, but still don't know how to tame. In yet another time-frame of a life-time prison, I picture the face of this silly little boy I see standing in a perfect pose, reminding my already conscious brain of how much I still want him in my life. Still, his deep voice and pinky cheeks keeps reminding me of how I was never really special, but just someone who gave him attention. Now I sit alongside my most detrimental thoughts and watch it from the sidelines the reality of my convictions crumble down when it hits me that I will never have someone like him again, because the reason that made him like me wasn't because I am who I am, but because he didn’t care that I was who I was at a specific vortex of time. And that is the kind of rare that would be beautiful if it didn't hurt me because I know it's not the reality of the world. That’s why he’s the one I think about when I think about being loved, because, in the tiny seconds that he made me feel it, I discovered how that feeling really was.

However, in all the despair and hurtful associations, I don't feel sad about it. I'm just disappointed that I'm still writing about the same old thing. It's not even that important to me anymore — it's just a memory being unlocked by interrelations created by verses and rhymes. It's fine. It's all fine. Now I'm taking one day at a time and not giving all of myself for the sake of my mental health. As I hug new arms, I share my pain with new ears, and I walk outside to feel the sun and faces that flirt back to me with no other intention besides reminding myself that I'm someone that someone else can appreciate. And I swear one day I will hold on to happy moments like these and write about them in full length. But this is me, again, ending on a sour note. I'm better now — I just need to remember that.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Careful What You Wish For

Part of me throws my common sense under the carpet when it comes to living my life without you. I like to think that it's okay to have something chaotic and problematic for once because that’s part of growing up, and everyone else around me seems to have something stupid going on in their lives, anyway. So as I follow my almost flat pulsation I'll impulsively decide to forget my fixed certainty that you hate me and my nonexistent self love and control and reach for you while I stare at the nothingness in my room for one whole hour. I just want to talk to someone, but the truth is that my someone is you. Only you. You're the one I want to talk to, but I can't shake the feeling that I’m just another person adding chaos to your life. Like I do with everyone around me.

This wasn't even supposed to be about you. It was supposed to be about how I walked around the starless streets of Toronto listening to As Long As It Leads to Me by Fly By Midnight, but right now, it is about you, and I'm fighting everything inside of me to keep me from hating myself. I'm just desperate. I don’t know what to do. My mind keeps killing every single good part of myself, and while I stare at walls, my thoughts race from a thousand parallel lines entangling themselves together then to calm streets at eleven p.m. on a Saturday. Because it feels like hope appears and disappears with you. You make me feel like we can be alone together because, just like me, you're also feeling like you've been left behind. You make me feel like I can show you my favorite art gallery and make plans to get drunk together because you don't care about what other people may think. But the truth is that we both know this is the worst idea ever, and the difference between us is that you have the self-control to build your boundaries while I keep stumbling around the walls I've built just to tear it down for you.

Maybe I’ve been looking at this through an incorrect perspective and there’s nothing actually "wrong" with me. Maybe, just maybe, I haven’t found my place yet, even though I fought so hard to be where I am. That's why I don't like to think that, because what if I find a new place for me and then I screw up that place just the same? I can't help but feeling that I should just give up because I'm not cut out for this world and, let's be honest, I don't have the looks nor the brain for it. And you just know it was your worst mistake to put me into your life, but just like me — who can't cut you out — I feel like you don’t know how to stop allowing people like me into your life. And when these realities hit, all the toxicity that would sound cute in a song, comes to the surface and shows its true colors. We won’t be the call at 2 a.m. because you don’t want to give space for this disturbing existence. We won’t be the cool kids smoking and drinking in a parking lot because you won’t allow yourself to live outside the blurry lines you created. We won't be the conversation at my door in the middle of a storm with you standing there soaked.

All I know is that I have this bitter taste on my tongue that once made me believe I could have guys like you. Now, I go to clubs, and I get my hopes high when I see someone like you walking into the place. I feel a familiar pull — like I’m waiting for something that already slipped away. Yesterday, in a somber room, something bloomed when this chamomile boy caught my attention. From the very first sight, I knew I wanted him. Our shoulders brushed on the dance floor, our backs aligned, and I touched his fingers under the drunken crowd. For a moment it felt like I could have it all. Suddenly, I’m pushed back to reality, and all that fantasy of a toxic yet exciting existence withered away. Once again, I’m just a weightless body hanging from my Atlas on a white chair, looking at the floor with an alignment that would make my Movement professor throw up. Seeing through the many layers of cement and brick beneath my feet, into all the other rooms under me. Maybe one day I won't take it personally, but not tonight. Not tonight.

For one hour, I ponder if I should just give up while I feel tears forming on my face because giving up starts to be feel more possible and drastic than only quitting this dream, but life altogether. If I can't help breaking down because I was cast as characters who only has five lines during two big scenes, then what’s the point of wanting to follow this career? Not when I’m not European white, with a way too short and not blond hair and a well trimmed bear in a room with clean faces. I never thought I was the most gorgeous in the room anyway, but damn, now? It’s even worse. Sometimes, I look at myself up close, and I’m so surprised by how beautiful I am that I mutter words like, "I’m so gorgeous, why do I keep forgetting that?" but the reality is that I'm only beautiful if you look at me up close, but you will never try to see me up close because, at a distance, I’m everything you despise. So maybe giving up is the only thing to do — go back to my steady life and use my money to travel the world and get fashionable clothes instead of paying to go to a place where no one really cares about me and where I only seem to make everyone uncomfortable and creeped out. But now that I've tried, life will never look like that again, and I'm sure that if I were to come back, I would still feel miserable for the chance that I had and that I screwed up.

Oh my god. Where did I lose myself along the way? Is this the end of everything or can I truly believe I'm figuring things out and that takes time? Sometimes is so hard to be that hopeful, specially when, hours ago, everything felt possible. I was walking down the streets with a latte in one hand and an edible in the other, feeling like everything was at least decent; now, I just hate every part of my existence. I’ll stay up late drinking wine, listening to How Does It Feel to Be Forgotten by Selena Gomez, relating to it more than I should, while skipping the gym one more time because when I was really in the mood to go, someone else decided to use the room, and I have this thing in my head that keeps me from wanting to work out with other people watching. I had so much potential. Now I get happy when people points out how I have sense of style and color, and how they say my name because it means that I exist to them. I guess you should be careful with what you wish for. This is the life of the many excruciating songs I vicariously listened to hoping to one day relate, but now I do and it's no fun. No fun at all.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Am I Allowed To Make Mistakes?

ㅤ🎧 Listening To: Heart Race and As Long As It Leads To Me by Fly By Midnight ㅤ📖 Reading: The Winter's Tale by Wiliam Shakespeare ㅤ📺 Watching: Big Little Lies Season 1

"Am I allowed to make mistakes? Why do I feel like I'm not? What if I am?" These question are burning my head up for the past few days and no matter the answer I get, it's never a good one. I swore to myself that, the next time I would come in here, I would post about something positive (like how being the president of the Theatre Club at my school was not only something I set as a goal before starting school, but is also something that gives me amazing opportunities), but today I'm breaking that promise. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been trying to fix some relationships that I thought I had wronged. For that I had a list of people I would talk to, but this list disappeared after I talked to the most important one in it. I not only realized that I didn't really have to talk to every single person, but also that I didn't have to make a big deal about it because I had already come to the conclusion that nothing is as bad as it seems. So ever since that day I moved on with my life and it's been good, but as a snowy day at what you thought was the end of winter, things happened that proved to me, once again, how I am so bad at communicating things (which is ironic considering how much reading and writing I do).

You see, there’s this funny thing that happens inside my brain. I think too much and too fast, which makes me create dialogues in my head when I'm in a dialogue in real life. Inside my head I'm not only processing what the person is saying but I'm also responding to it, creating somewhat unreasonable correlation, and translating everything at the same time in split of seconds before responding. This process creates a response (or action) related to what's being talked about but also connecting to something I was thinking about. Which would be fine and normal, but the thing is that no one knows what I am thinking about, so my responses come out a bit disconnected, which can cause a lot of miscommunication. Being so hard on myself doesn't help either because it drives me to a constant surveillance of my words because I'm scared to make things worse. Which, like any other cycle would prove us, indeed makes things worse.

The truth is that I don't think I'm allowed to make mistakes, even though it seems that I am always forgiven mistake from others. I know how hard it is to live with the guilty that a good moment can be ruined by a stupid word or action, because it happened to me before, so I try to be as understanding as I can, but I don't feel like I'm handled the same grace. For instance, I injured myself last week when doing a supported exercise with a friend of mine. Even though it hurt like hell and made me really scared because it had been the second time in less than a year that I had being injured in the same place, I know it wasn't my friend’s fault, so I tried my best to let them know how fine I was and then I moved on with my life. This is who I am, and I know people react to things differently, but still part of me hurt to think I wouldn't be handle the same grace as I'm giving. I know my therapist says I need to believe in the change first so it can happen, but right now I can’t. Sometimes I keep thinking "what would Serena Van Der Wodsen (from Gossip Girl) do or say?" as a way to empower myself because she's just an icon, but the truth is that she is a TV show character. She can do or say whatever she wants because no one will ever held her accountable because, if they did so, the TV show would have never lasted six seasons. However, I'm a real person and I know my actions and words can have consequences, and even though I feel like I'm always doing or saying something with the best of intentions, sometimes that's just not enough. I know people change and our opinions can do too as well, but I just don't think it will for me. It feels like I've been categorized and that my label will forever stay the same.

Part of my process of recognition and self awareness includes making myself know that people are right in their claims. I don't ever want to sound like a victim because I know that, if someone feel hurt by me, it is for a valid reason, having I had the intention or not. I want to be accountable, but that doesn’t mean I need to punish myself forever. But still the throbing of my turbulant mind will follow me for days as I curse myself over and over again for what I did wrong. I mean, even a fun night out with my friends had once become a police questioning of how annoying I might have been because I drank too much. Hell, one of these friends were so drunk that they fell on the floor twice during that night. I had friends being held by their partners tumbling down to their house front door so much fun they had. And it all seems fine, because it is. That's part of going out. But that was not what I was focusing on. And that makes me realize that all these boiling feelings are only creating more drama inside of me, and therefore around me, which was something I thought I would be avoiding ever since I stopped acting on my feelings and being more by myself.

I wish I could give myself the same grace I give to others. During one of my Speech assignments, I orated to the class an excerpt from Taylor's doctorate acceptance speech at the New York University. The part that made me pick this piece initially was the one where she says "Not being invited to the parties or sleepovers made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else.". However, what hit me the most now was how sincere she was about mistakes. She would say: "I lose perspective all the time. I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism. But in your life, you will inevitably misspeak, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat.". If she feels like this, and I'm sure every person who heard her saying that felt the same, why can't I feel like it's ok? Maybe it's because I once had someone saying that they loved me but shutting me out completely after I tried drugs for the first time with them. Or how this guy has always looked at me with hate in his eyes without me even knowing the reason why.

Even more each day I'm learning how my desires to live an intense and high-school life were misplaced and inconsistent with who I really am. It's not fun living your life thinking you can't make a mistake. It's not fun living your life being pushed aside for learning how to be a human. It's not fun living your life afraid no one will have your back. And I'm too old and too kind to be feeling that, but I know it is my time to learn and I'll try to be a good student. Maybe I don’t fully believe in this change yet, but maybe that’s part of learning too. I'll keep trying to remind myself that most things I beat myself over, were things that meant nothing in the bigger picture. I'll keep trying to remember that there are people that will hug and kiss me even in chaotic moments. I know no one is running a tally of my mistakes and that I have places I can come back to. Now, I will only allow myself to be burned up by questions such as "What if I let myself believe that people can grow with me such as I can grow on them?" and instead of stomping on my roses I will watch the flowers grow knowing that my growth matters more than my past missteps and maybe in the middle of this shift of perspective someone will want to sit beside me on a seesaw and feel the butterfly made of fears and second guessing become butterflies of excitement and hope.

[gnvrh]

LifeOr... Failed Rorschach Test

While sitting in front of my computer thinking about what to write, Greenlight by Tate McRae plays on my TV. I check my phone, and it’s 1 a.m. Another sleepless night, as it seems. The good thing about school is that, inevitably, I have to wake up early, so even if I’m staying up late, I know that I will have to leave my bed with sufficient time to get there by 9 a.m., which I can’t complain because waking up early feels like I’m making the most of my day. And besides, today I took a long nap after hitting the gym, which was made possible by a Thursday class that ends earlier than the regular classes during the week. Lately, hitting the gym is becoming less of a routine and more of a moment in time. Even though I understand that school is finally showing the toll it has on me, draining every drop of my disposition, I can’t help but feel sad about how this part of my life turned from something so important to something optional. Still, I go whenever I can, and it makes me feel good to see that I’m focusing on my physical condition despite everything, even if not in the same way as months ago. Sometimes it's hard showing up for yourself, but as long as you do it, that's what matters.

Life keeps changing, but lately, I’ve been reconnecting with the parts of myself I’ve missed the most. The first would be the person I was last September, when school had just begun and the sun was shining outside when the classes of the day ended. This week was the first in ages where I actually left school while the sun was still shining and the weather was perfect (cold enough to make me wear a sweater and a jacket, but warm enough to make me feel the rays of light warming up my way back home). This time around, I was all by myself (unlike last year when we would walk in flocks, with people separating from the group at every corner), but I didn’t feel bad about it. This term is going immensely better than the last one. I’m not even mad to have to recite, for the thousandth time, my Romeo monologue, and there’s a sense of “I want to impress and show what I can do” lingering once again inside of me, which can sound egoistic, but it was something I really missed — the passion for and the anxiety of performing.

The second thing that is bringing me back to the calmness I long ago lost is this new habit I created. In the district where I study, there’s an art gallery. During a random Sunday afternoon after my work shift, I decided to enter it after I had stopped at one of its mirrored windows to fix my outfit. I remember my teary-breezed eyes and wondered if, to a stranger’s eyes, it would seem like I was crying. If so, would they make up reasons in their minds? As a people-watcher, I like to imagine the stories of strangers I’ll never see again. As I entered the place with a latte in my hands, this uninvolved, uncomplicated, and unscripted event reminded me of the times I would visit galleries in São Paulo. I thought that could be something I could do often there. Something to be added to my routine, as a safe place. While exploring the covered-with-painting walls, I found myself facing one that altered the chemicals of my brain. I don’t remember ever looking at a piece of art and loving it so much. Called Failed Rorschach Test, created by Patrick Skals, it’s not what you would think. There are no images, nor surrealism or minimalism, or brush patterns. Instead, it’s basically a collage of text-based papers and letters splashed on a ripped surface. I stood there admiring every detail, texture, and hidden text while picturing how it would look on my walls. Now that I’m writing about it, I can understand why it resonated so much with me. Being a piece made out of collages of different texts and letters, stories and dreams, it seems to translate the very form of my own existence — an existence made of old pieces and writings glued together with scattered memories and speeches written out and edited, but never spoken.

Lastly, I’m getting back into my night walks. To be fair, it wasn’t something I lost, but every single time I get the chance to do it in a spontaneous way, it makes me feel good. The other day, I had left a presentation from the Third Years of school (where they read incredible plays and excerpts they created) and went home craving wine. Unfortunately, Toronto has this law of liquor stores closing at 9 p.m., so I cursed myself for not thinking about it earlier. But then I wondered if I could order it online (I mean... 2025...) and, while searching for a place, I discovered that there was a store that was still open and had good prices. With that determination, there I went, and what had started as a wine hunt became a nice night walk. Even though I was around an area I already knew, it felt freeing just strolling and taking pictures (especially of parking lots, which is something I’ve become really drawn to recently). However, it was only when I left an underground theatre, a few days later, where I watched a one-woman show, that I reconnected with the part of myself who would just explore my surroundings. Instead of getting back home on a streetcar, I decided to go walking on that familiar, but yet unexplored, area. The result was discovering many good places that I’d like to visit with my friends in the near future. While blasting The Archer by Taylor Swift, I didn’t feel hopelessly lonely as I would have a few weeks ago while singing along to lines as “All the king’s horses, all the king’s men couldn’t put me together again, cause all of my enemies started out friends".

The weekend before, I sat down with a friend I was feeling disconnected from to have a talk, and it was the best decision I could have made that week. After hearing some nasty things from someone I was trying to make up for a wrongdoing of mine, I braced myself for another minefield conversation, but instead, it turned into exactly what I needed. The truth was that that was the connection I needed to try to fix. Carrying now a lighter heart — after pouring and tearing my heart out to someone who, once being as broken as me, would understand and acknowledge the pain with the immense love they carry inside — something shifted, and my week started incredibly well. The week where I would leave the underground theatre and roam around instead of just getting inside an electric bus. On my walks, I made mental notes to visit places like The Comrade and Tabule and enjoyed the cold but not freezing breeze, feeling inspired and ready for another day. Finally, things feel like they’re settling into place, and all I want to do is capture it in words. I want to be remembered by my writings, and I want these vocals and consonants to be sweet and light as possible, like feathers blowing from the wind after you see a bird on the grass. I know I have it in me.

[gnvrh]

MusicOr... Permanent Scars by Christopher

Favorite Lyrics: Where it's just everything you said in my head on repeat and I ⬩ Just can't let it rest, silhouettes on the street at night ⬩ Like you never left, but you did, and I made it this far ⬩ Just know you left a permanent scar inside my chest, now the rest of us is history ⬩ Look at all this mess that you left, unsolved mysteries ⬩ Did you try your best? ⬩ Cause I did, and I made it this far ⬩ Just know you left a permanent scar;

Back in the day, my favorite way to spend the dawn of a long day was to stay awake in my bed listening to music. I would crawl between my sheets and move between sleep and wakefulness with my earphones bursting with some song. I would wake up mid-through it and realize that, whichever song it was playing at the moment, was the best one in the whole wide world, just to fall asleep again and never recall which one it was. I don’t exactly remember it, but I’m pretty sure songs from Christopher might have crossed my ears on one of those nights. Avalanche was the most likely, for example, because it was my favourite song from him. Even though he has some fun ones, like Told You So or Nympho, Avalanche stood out to me because of its relatable lyrics about loving someone that was nothing but a downfall. Singing about sex is fun — which he does a lot and, as a Britney Spears fan after all I have ways to enjoy it — but I always searched for something more substantial. Because of that, unfortunately, nothing he released really stuck with me ever since I discovered his debut album years ago. I was glad to know he had finally found a way to be more well-known after his movie with Netflix, but I never really found my way back to him. That was until another sleepless night when I stumbled upon Permanent Scars while searching for something to listen to on YouTube.

More and more each day, I find myself staying awake until late at night, trying to stretch the day to enjoy more “me” time. I discovered that my favorite moment of the day is when it’s dark, especially when I’m at my place. There’s nothing more peaceful and sacred to me than entering my cold room after a long day and I can see the abandoned building that I have as my neighbour, covered in the snow I hadn’t seen fall because I was in school the whole day. Against what would be a smart choice, I decided to play his new song when its thumbnail appeared on my TV. Suddenly, I was back again in the house I used to live in before moving abroad, with a bedroom that wasn’t a kitchen and a living room at the same time. I was back in the place where I used to have a window that faced the street, a window that always had the curtain covering up ever so slightly because I was scared of someone passing by and seeing me in my boxers on a summer day.

Life right now doesn't have many crazy plots happening at the same time. The feelings turmoiling inside, though, still the same. A mix of always reminiscing about old habits and hurts and the desire to relate to new hurting ways. As I grew more and more numb at the start of the year, I found myself on the old path of wanting to hurt just to feel something. The act of not letting go out of fear nothing will stick keeps me from actually healing, and one may think that knowing it would help, but it doesn't exactly. It doesn’t matter how much I learn how to grow if there’s still a part of me that wants to stay in the comfort of hurt. It makes sense, especially now that I’m coming to the realization that I keep thinking people did me wrong when, in fact, I did them wrong. When I was in London, I had this huge, crazy thing happening to me and my closest friends, putting me face-to-face with someone who always thought people were wronging them. They would say that others saw their actions as those of a crazy person because, no matter how hurt they were, whenever they tried to speak their truth, it sounded as though they were indisputably wrong and everyone else was right. This made their problems seem unreal, when to them, it was the most real thing in the entire universe. I've always been an empathic person, so I could imagine how terrifying it must have been to think that you’ll never be believed, but in this experience, me and my friends weren't gaslighting this person. It was just that they were always blowing things out of proportion and seeing things that weren’t there.

Amongst all the fear and tears the situation caused for me and my friends, it also made me realize how I never wanted to be in a position where I would exile myself from everything because I believed that everyone else was wrong and I was purely and uniquely right. I never really wanted to lean into the idea that the whole world was against me (even if it feels incredibly powerful to think that everything was about me), but sometimes that’s what we do. It’s human nature to blame others because pointing fingers at yourself is really hard, and we’re always looking for what’s easy, not what is right. In many situations, my way of calming myself down was to repeat, in front of the mirror of my soul, lines like, “Nobody apologized for how they treated me; they just blamed me for how I reacted.” It made sense to me. After all, I’m an overreactor. I will never keep quiet, nor will I ever not talk about something that hurt me, which can cause more than just a ripple in an ocean. While most people stay quiet when a hurricane is destroying their little towns, for better or worse, I throw myself into the spirals of air, ready to take every single wooden house around with me, throwing the splinters of my forever unsolved mysteries of the past around like arrows wreckeing everything in between me and my directioneless aim.

This is how the chorus of Permanent Scars feels to me. It’s like being back in my teenage years, lying drunk and naked on the floor of my bedroom with the window facing the street. The guitar, the drums, the quality of the organic instruments used here — it all feels timeless. That’s why songs like this speak volumes to me, even when I don’t have anyone specific to relate the lyrics to. The nostalgic feeling takes me back to all the times I saw silhouettes on the street of people who left me with more than just lyrics on a piece of paper, and God knows why I carry these black-blood scars with me even now, after making it this far. I still carry the scars of the boy I used to think had the best kiss in the whole world, but who was too much of a sad conceptual idea to be something real in my life. I still carry the scars of the guy I held in the corridors of my old university, whose heartbeat I felt against my chest, but who became the saddest night of my life months later. And I still carry the scars of the man with a sunshine heart that I could have carried with care, but that I broke, because my midnight rain didn't know how to hold the fragile thing I always asked for. I guess that’s why I still go to bed thinking about how much I want to apologize for all the hurt I caused, many years later. I keep everything in files, categorized amongst cobwebs, too devoted to my self-importance to dare let any memory go to waste. It’s like I can’t erase any pain because, in doing that, I would be wronging an old version of myself — the version who felt like that pain was the end of the world as I knew it, because it was. If I let go, then it can only means it wasn’t, which is too much of an invalidating reality to live in.

So when Christopher sings about the lingering of everything that was once said, I hear those words in my head, speaking a language I can’t understand but that I can feel. When he sings about silhouettes in the street at night, I see multiple faces flashing in blurs during my drunken walks. Because they never left my chest. They’re part of my broken history. They’re part of the unsolved mystery that I feel I am. The mystery of wondering if I’ll ever feel happy or if I’ll ever feel like I have what’s enough. I made it this far, and people keep congratulating me, but it still feels like I’m far away from where I’m supposed to be. A place I don’t even know because it keeps changing— because I always want more and more. I’m just reaching for it, whatever “it” is, carrying all this baggage that makes me hurt and damage the people I always wanted in my life. I stopped fantasizing about changing countries, names, and realities. No matter the longitude and latitude of my physical body, the compass of my heart is forever pointed toward my deepest hurt. Writing is so powerful because only now am I coming to the conclusion that my default-self believes makes me never really move on from anything in my life. It leaves me wondering if it would be best to permanently break this compass or let the scars corrode me. I don’t know what would be worse.

[gnvrh]

MusicOr... We Hug Now by Sydney Rose and Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers

Favorite Lyrics (We Hug Now): Sometimes I go to sleep and I'm still 17 ⬩ You still live down my street ⬩ You're not mad at me ⬩⬩ I have a feeling you got everything you wanted ⬩ And you're not wasting time stuck here like me ⬩ You're just thinking it's a small thing that happened ⬩ The world ended when it happened to me;

Favorite Lyrics (Waiting Room): And I can wish all that I want, but it won't bring us together ⬩ Plus, I know whatever happens to me, I know it's for the better ⬩⬩ I wanna make you drive all night just because I said, "Maybe you should come over" ⬩ Wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents's teenage daughter ⬩ She'll be the best you ever had if you let her;

Some songs have a way of finding me when I never knew I needed them. Looking back at it now, it seems like the week of February 24th was a pivotal moment in my life this year. From fantasizing about dying on a pool to accidentally almost drowning in one, and then discovering new songs and a new movie that became my lifeline. As I mentioned on another post, I discovered We Hug Now by Sydney Rose while sitting on a corridor floor at my school, scrolling through Instagram. At that moment, I was so tired of rehearsing for my Vocal Masque presentation that I couldn't wait for it to come — not because I was excited, but because I wanted it to finally be done with it. If at first, I was excited about the many ways I could use this to showcase a powerful and provocative performance, now I was feeling dragged down by the loss of passion and lack of an interesting ending for my piece. I watched many peers doing theirs, and amongst them all, one struck me as the goal that I wanted to reach but at this moment it was too far from me to achieve it.

For days, I felt stuck at a wall that I knew I would never break through. It's funny, though, to think about it that way because, during a moment in my piece, I'm literally breaking down a wall with my hands. In the story I created for that section, I was facing a person that I wanted so badly to be with but couldn't. I was seeing his face separated from me by a container made of bricks, building up around me, surrounding and suffocating me, keeping everything that I needed the most on the outside. Then, in a desperate act to break free, I started to punch these walls, hoping to demolish them, but as I felt the frenetic exasperation taking control of me, my punches took on a life of their own. Flooding tears ran out of me, and all of a sudden, the walls were already down on the floor, but I kept hitting and hitting, unaware of my reality, until I reached this person on the other side and killed them with my bare knuckles that never knew how to stop punching. When I got a hold of myself, it was over. My hands were shaking, my knuckles were bruised like violets, and all that I could feel was anger taking over my body, making me bloodthirsty. Transforming me into a monster, a demon even, or maybe both and more, eating the body I had just killed. Then, all this experience left me as nothing but a broken collage of organs and tissues lying on the floor, with nothing left but the sounds of an unfixable future doomed by the bad decisions of an anguished past self. As I rose from the ground, I didn’t rise like a winning champion. I rose like a defeated soldier, taking up his dagger and aiming for the jugular. My jugular. If I was so afraid of making sounds, then what’s the use of having things like vocal cords, I thought while extracting mine. I guess that I actually achieved the goal of creating something hauntingly disturbing, right? Guess I found my ending and my passion for my piece again.

With so much intensity in my veins, I should have expected the side things would take, but honestly, little did I know that submerging myself into these songs would be the pathway to intoxicating myself into a depressive episode. Songs can dictate the way I feel about life, transforming my perspective into something larger than life, for worse or for better. That day was for the worse. I guess that the part that really stuck with me was the bridge at the end, when Sydney sings, “You're just thinking it's a small thing that happened, the world ended when it happened to me,” because that's the truth of my life. For my catastrophic mind, everything feels like running into a house that's burning down. Something that you should avoid, but that you're drawn to. I could never fuck with peace and quiet because my mind is racing to picture every bad outcome so I can prepare myself for it. So when, and if, it happens, I’ll have all the tools to deal with it. The problem is that I never really have them. I suffer prior, during, and after everything happens. And if you look at it from the outside, I probably don't have anything that proves that I actually have a problem, but it feels so much like I have the worst things happening to me. That's why, for anyone else, it could feel like a small problem, but for me, it's not. I lost count of how many days I went to bed hoping that people would forgive me for being so damn reactive. I go to bed and dream about my best friend when I was a teenager forgiving me for being too loud in his house, making his mom hate me. I go to bed and dream about my first boyfriend forgiving me for being so anxious about our relationship and for acting out when he broke up with me. In my head, everyone hates me for being so intense, and I can never hope for them to forgive me because not even I can forgive myself. I know that when there’s smoke, there’s fire, but in my forest, not a single tree was ever left standing.

You would imagine that being so aware of it would actually be helpful, but it's not. I will never tire myself from saying that awareness is ruining my life, but sometimes I find ways to make it helpful. Now, after a session with my therapist and a night out with friends, I understand this tendency better, and I feel like it's finally time to work on it. Not that I wasn't trying to before, but sometimes one is trying through all the wrong mechanics. And sometimes, one likes the pain of being stuck in the precipice. In the waiting room of a hospital, bleeding but incapable of moving because the bleeding feels like being alive. Like having something worth feeling for. How many times have I stayed around for the chance to see that one guy (curiously, the one I see being separated from me through the brick walls) leaving the building, hoping for the chance of him either asking me to walk home with him or for the confirmation that he was, in fact, in love with another girl? I used to do that a lot. Stay around for the fear of missing something, for the hope that I would include myself in conversations no one really wanted me to be part of. I won’t say I don’t do that anymore because I still do. Sometimes, it ends up being a good idea, like when I had the chance to finally talk with a friend that I was feeling separated from. Other times — and these times are more often — I just stay around to have yet another confirmation that I’m not welcome at some dinner tables.

When I was still drunk in the fumes of my car crash, I revisited Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers, a song I knew from past days but that never really spoke to me. I know everyone thinks it’s a masterpiece, but I never saw it. It only spoke to me when the repetitive end echoed in my living room and in my heart this Tuesday night, preaching to me that “I know whatever happens to me, I know it's for the better”. So I decided to buy an overpriced ice cream and wafers and sat down at home to watch Fair Haven again because, at this point, it had become my new comfort movie. While doing that, I did something trivial that wouldn’t feel like some life-altering experience at the moment. That thing was updating my phone. Last thing I knew, my device had been corrupted, which made me lose every single thing in it. All my photos. All my voice memos. All the memories of my life in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Gone. I felt devastated. But, like many other things in my life, I just sucked it up and continued living. Tried to fix it, but worthlessly. Crying and getting mad over it wouldn’t bring my phone back. And in an act of faking it until I made it, I chanted to myself that everything that happened to me so far was for the better. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that’s just a lie we tell ourselves. But still, I tried to believe it. Because life has funny ways of showing you that sometimes we ask for things we really don’t want. Like when I had suicidal thoughts of drowning one day, then the next actually almost drowning in a 3-meter pool. It turns out drowning is not peaceful. Ironic.

These terrible days (that, mind you, happened during the week I was supposed to have a break from school) might have taken many memories from me, but they brought me new favorite songs and a favorite movie, so I’m winning. All I know is that I don’t want to be that guy who always has some complaint to make when somebody asks something nice. I know I’m not. I know my outbursts of sadness come with loving people around me reminding me how they appreciate me and how they are there to help me. I guess that’s the biggest difference. At the end of the day, I know, and I feel, that I have people around me who are actually inspired by me and who believe in me. I have such an urgent fear that I’m making people hate me, but the truth is that I’m making the right ones feel loved. I’m making them say how happy they are that I made it to the party. I’m making them say how proud they are of me for fighting for my dreams even in dark times. All it took me was to place my perspective on the right shelf and in the right people. Now I hug them as I leave my waiting room, driving myself to the corridor that leads to the rest of my life, and I’m relearning to love the view.

[gnvrh]

MoviesOr... Fair Haven

In the middle of a desperate day, I decided that I wanted to watch some movie that would make me feel comfortable. Going through the LGBT list on Amazon Prime, I stumbled upon Fair Haven and got curious. The small preview showed two cute boys, and with that, I was sold. It had been a terrible day; I just wanted to live vicariously through something positive. Little did I know that this movie would become so important to me. Almost like the yellow lifeline someone threw me the other day.

It tells the story of James, a boy who returns to his family farm after a long stay in conversion therapy. With he returns, he finds himself torn between the expectations of his emotionally distant father and the memories of a past love he’s still trying to bury. The movie unpacks its story slowly and steadily and becomes, after each scene, even more and more emotional. In the scene where James is discussing college options with his father, Richard, it became clear to me that I was going to adore this movie. Of course, it’s easier when the main character is gorgeous (and reminded me of an old crush), but this scene was so well written and created that I had no choice but to hold it dear to my heart. The way the son and father argue felt genuine from beginning to end, especially at the moment when James said that he wanted to sell the farm once he inherited it, and his father looked so sad and miserable. The desperation in his eyes was shattering. The way he argued with James about how the farm was a roof over his head, money in the bank, and a safety net he was too young to understand felt so human. It reminded me of many discussions I had with my mother. Discussions that ended just like in the movie, with me sitting down and just existing with her because there was no point in arguing. No point in wishing they never existed or that they never were my parents, especially because I could never ever really meant it.

Then we’re introduced to Charlie, the reason why James’s father sent him to a Christian therapy camp. Even though it felt like the movie lacked a deeper explanation of what led to that (especially because I’m still trying to understand if the goal was to cure him, to help with his grief about his mother, or maybe both), their first encounter since James left translated perfectly the conflicting emotions both had. Charlie was shocked and then disappointed about James’s return, and James was filled with an anger that was nothing but love trying not to come to the surface, because he had learned it was wrong. Both feelings boiled up with no resolution, summed up by a box of old memories in polaroids and never collected receipts.

As the movie develops and we see James trying to find a heterosexual life, we see him struggling with living the life people want him to live while giving up on the life he wants to live. I saw myself in him when he had to give up on his music career to go to community college for agriculture. Even though I never had to fake a relationship with a girl, I could understand the pain of how he was trying to stick around with what was right, by “God’s law of inner nature” — at least the law the therapist considered true, anyway. While living this double life, James promised Charlie to pick him up once his shift was done, after Charlie was jumped by some guys. This is where the movie started to feel scary for me. For context, this was released in 2016, a time when we didn’t have many happy gay movies. So when the storyline about being jumped was introduced, I kept my guard up, thinking it would happen again, especially when James proposed to drive him home. I thought that what would follow was that, once they got home, they both would be jumped, and I was nervous about that possibility. Even though the story didn’t move in that direction, the fear didn’t leave because then James was forced to make plans in the evening he promised to drive Charlie. Now, I was scared that he wouldn’t make it and that it would hurt the friendship they were starting to rebuild. That didn’t happen either.

Fair Haven was promising to be a very happy movie, something I wouldn’t expect from a movie made in the year it was made. If today we see a lot of LGBT-positive stories in movies or TV shows, that was not always the case. It was when I realized that this could be a happy movie that the certainty that I would really love it hit again. The drive home became a picnic in front of a lake, which became their new first kiss. What followed was such a sweet scene, with them running to the farm barn and… well, you can imagine. However, when the morning came and both James’s father and Suzy (the girl James was trying to be hetero with) appeared at the farm looking for him, I started to panic again. I knew, I just knew something bad was going to happen. I mean, it had to, right? His father would catch them and beat the hell out of them. The girl would take pictures and tell the whole city. Throughout the whole anticipating scene, I kept screaming at my TV screen as if they could hear my warnings to stop wasting time and leave the barn. But they couldn’t listen. James wouldn’t pick up his phone, Charlie wouldn’t get up from the improvised bed. And so, Suzy caught them both — in a weird way, but still. James’s father, Richard, only watched from a distance.

Once again, no tragic end, and yet another powerful father-and-son scene, when James said that he wasn’t the man his father wanted him to be, and for that, his mother would be disappointed. To that, his father responded that that would make two of them because he was also disappointed in his son. Charlie and James would meet up later and agree to move together to Boston and start a new life. Here, it became evident that the movie could’ve used a few more minutes to develop some storylines and decisions. Not only because it would have given the chance to explore some dramatic layers (like the possibility of James and Charlie being jumped by the same guys who attacked Charlie first in a clear act of homophobia), but also because it would have brought more details about Charlie’s family and situation. It felt weird that, without any context or background, Charlie would also want to leave everything behind and live a life with his recent boyfriend (and, by the way, join the circus if Boston didn’t work out). With more time, it would have made Richard’s decision to support both James’s sexuality and dreams more plausible. We all like an understanding parent, but he was too understanding — after all, he was the one who sent James to a church-like place to cure his gayness. But maybe that’s just me wanting to complicate a movie that clearly just wanted to be happy as possible. It really sheds a light on how we are created with an inherently expectation for the world to crash, as though happiness is only a concept and not a possible reality we can actually achieve.

One thing, however, didn’t feel unexplored: James’s father finally agreeing to sell the farm. It felt like a long time coming. From the first discussion between them, as I mentioned, to the sellers coming to pitch the idea to him, to him finally understanding that the money from the farm could help James with his college in Boston — it felt like a very genuine storyline development, and it was also a very sweet full circle for the character. The same way that the ending of the movie is a full circle with the start, as both happen in a bus station. And in that way, a beautiful movie is wrapped up perfectly, and all that’s left for me is to wonder — how did I never hear about this movie before? So sweet and so hopeful. On a day when I had the worst thoughts, it was nice to find something to be my guiding light for a few hours. I know, I just know that, like Love, Simon or The Fault in Our Stars, this will become my comfort movie, and I’m so happy about this prospect. My time may have come and gone, and I might never feel like I will live something pure like this ever again, but that’s why, after all, movies (and music, and books, and plays) exist — to bring us to places we usually don’t go. And thankfully, I’m an actor, so, who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be in my Fair Haven, and some gay kid will watch it on a miserable day and feel hopeful and better once the credits roll. That would be heaven on earth for me.

[gnvrh]

MusicOr... So Close To What by Tate McRae

Throughout my first listen of So Close To What by Tate McRae, I thought that the album didn’t have any really good songs apart from Two Hands, which had become one of my favorite songs from Tate. Looking back at this first impression, I really don’t know what kind of drug I was on. This is the first album of hers that I like from back to back, even with her following the current mainstream format of short songs (doing that by sacrificing, almost all the time, the repetition of a last chorus).

Miss Possessive opens the album with a persona-song that I couldn’t relate to more. Amongst scrapped photoshoots and the name of her tour, I wonder if that was the first concept for this album. I honestly wouldn’t mind. Something in me likes the idea of being possessive when it comes to love and having someone no one can help but want to have as well. Toxicity aside, it gives that badass attitude to self-positioning yourself as the one who has it all and that everybody is jealous of. I mean, in the end, it is a good concept. Sydney Sweeney intro is a... choice, but it adds to the messy vibe of the song.

Favorite Lyrics (Revolving Door): My cold heart is finally melting ⬩ I moved from the east to the west wing ⬩ I finally think it might be helping ⬩ I confess, I'm not that versatile ⬩ Say I'm good, but I might be in denial ⬩ Takes one call and that undoes the dial ⬩⬩ Change my mind so much I can't find it ⬩ I work so much, can't be reminded ⬩ Life feels worse, but good with you in it ⬩ Supposed to be on stage, but fuck it, I need a minute;

Moving on the tracklist, Revolving Door hits close to home as a song that could be the soundtrack of my life in many moments. As a close friend cleverly pointed out this songs is just too me, so he wasn’t surprised when I told him that it was one of my favourites from the album. When it comes to getting over someone, my head always does it first, while my heart does it last, after many, many tries. Being someone who always runs after what I want, that sometimes also means running after situations that are not for me, just because they feel familiar, most of the times in a bad way. And if someone asks me, well, I will say that it’s in the past, but it’s more of a "fake it till you make it" manifestation statement than a truthful one. Not to mention that funny, if not tragic, reference to being inside a mental institution when it comes to falling in love with someone. If anything, Revolving Door makes more sense when I go back to the bridge, talking about how I was supposed to be on a stage but asking for a minute. That actually happened one day before the release day, when I was going to present my Scene Study of the play Casimir and Caroline to the school. If anything, life doesn’t feel worse, but it definitely feels challenging.

Now, I wasn’t telling the full truth when I said at first that I didn’t like the full album because Dear God actually stood out on the first listen, being the first one I recognized as a more pop song. Part of the reason why I felt like the album wasn’t good was because we don’t have more chaotic songs like Two Hands in it, and even though Dear God is not chaotic, something behind this Nelly Furtado-esque song caught my attention. Wheeling around the idea of Revolving Door, the aesthetic behind the feeling of connection with someone bad for you — because of the pleasure and the pain it causes — is something I can sense in the deep core of my bones. If now I can say that I definitely grew above that (unfortunately, I would say, but shouldn’t), part of me still lingers in the idea of how it used to feel being submerged in something wrong, close enough to drown, but ideal enough to make you feel alive.

Just like almost everyone, my thoughts on Purple Lace Bra were that it was Tate’s version of Diet Pepsi by Addison Rae, which for me is not a compliment. Not because the inspiration source is a bad one, but because Tate never struck me as someone who would copy the sound of someone else. Recently, however, I found more connections in the song. The instrumental intro reminds me of something Lana Del Rey would do in her earlier albums, and the first verses could be something Camila Cabello would record. With so many similarities, this song is saved by the clever bridge about how Tate feels that she’s only acknowledged during oral sex. I mean, the way she sings, “I'm losing my mind cause giving you head's the only time you think I got depth” got me in a chokehold. Bold and funny.

Favorite Lyrics (Signs): That one look means I wanna go ⬩ "I'm not mad," means you're in trouble ⬩ If you know me, boy, you should know, you should ⬩ Say, "I need space," don't look at the door ⬩ “I hate you," means I need you more ⬩ If I say, "Go have fun, babe," that's just short for you should ⬩⬩ For God's sake, don't believe a word that I say ⬩ I wanna touch on you all day ⬩ Instead, I'm pushing you away ⬩ So classic, assuming you're telepathic ⬩ Okay, it might make me batshit ⬩ Just doing it out of habit;

If Dear God was the first song I fell in love with in the released album, Signs was the second. It makes me wonder again what drug I was on during the first few listens because how could I have missed this masterpiece? This song is so me! Catch me going crazy over something small and silly or something that was left unsaid because I assume people will read my mind? If that’s not one hundred percent me, I don’t know what is. Whenever I say I need to go or that I don’t want you anymore, it definitely means the opposite. That’s because, like I mentioned before, my head moves on first, then my heart, so I might say rational things for the sake of my self-worth, but the truth is that my self-worth is always about to lay in shambles for a cute guy. At the end of the day, though, the reality is that all I wanted was for someone to stay around when things feel complicated, in the same way I stay around even when I shouldn’t. Seeing the signs of an aching heart and troubled mind and, instead of walking away, hanging around to discover how to make it better. Who knows? One day.

Favorite Lyrics (No, I’m Not In Love): Swear I'm only sleeping at your house ⬩ Six times in one week cause it's convenient ⬩ Only kinda dressing like you now ⬩ Cause your clothes, they fit me and that's good reason ⬩⬩ No, I am not in love ⬩ I am not thinking about you ⬩ Sun's not gonna come out ⬩ And I don't hate every girl your eyes go to ⬩ I am not in love ⬩ Sky has never been blue ⬩ No, I am not in love with you ⬩ Why would you think that?;

No, I’m Not In Love is another example of how I’m positive I was on drugs while first listening to this album because it passed me by completely. Just by the name of this song, it was obvious it would be one of my favorites. This godforsaken title is just too Gabe coded. Just like the warning signs we tend to overlook when first meeting someone, misguiding ourselves that the messages left on read and plans never made were just a character flaw of a very busy person, we also tend to bury the real feelings we’re feeling because it may seem too much for them to exist that quickly. For me, both disastrous equations are real. I’ll hide away the growing feelings I have and deny them, just as much as I will make up excuses for bad behaviors until it’s too late. It sounds fun in songs and in retrospect, but it’s definitely not the case when it happens in real life.

Favorite Lyrics (Greenlight): Midnight, one-twenty on the PCH, just you and me ⬩ Babe, you know I can't lie ⬩ The most alive I think I'll maybe ever be;

On the other hand, Greenlight was a mystery for me for quite some time. I know Tate wanted it to be the lead single, and even though I’m still not much of a fan of It’s Ok, I’m Ok, I didn’t understand why. All it took was a Google search to discover what PCH means in New York, and I was sold. Midnight drive on this iconic location? No surprise at all. Just like the previous one, for me, Greenlight is a positive song I would go to to remind myself of the possibilities of life. The meaning behind it, however, isn’t that positive. It hits too close to home with the current state I’m in. I can totally relate to the idea of standing behind the wheel, seeing that everything points you in a forward-moving direction, but just feeling stuck and unable to move. I’m so drawn to car ride imagery that I’m glad to see that this is basically the main personality of the album. This was actually something I talked about in class. When asked, "What's your favorite word?", my prompt response was "Headlights", because it seems that every song with that word I’m in love with. This one doesn’t have it, but it is about cars, and it has "Midnight", so that’s close enough. To what? A weird mind would be my first guess.

Better Than I Was and Call My Bluff come in to end this post. Even though they’re not in the official streaming version of the album, they’re both songs I absolutely adore. The first has this current theme I’ve explored in my writings before — of being the one before “The One”. The one that will show you everything you don’t want in a relationship and that will make you a better person, ready to finally be the perfect match for somebody else. And that someone else will have the better days, as I will stay pondering everything that happened for much longer than I should. As Pablo Neruda once wrote, "Love is so short, forgetting is so long", and I couldn’t feel it more ever since Taylor introduced me to this line in her Red album. All I am now is made out of broken pieces of relationships that didn’t work in the past, either romantically with a partner or platonically with friends. That’s why the metaphor of always being stuck at a green light, unable to move forward, hits close to me in the previous track. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to recognize a good thing standing in front of me after so many wrong things shined like gold. I’m afraid to say that, as of now, I don’t know how to recognize it. Maybe one day I will.

The final song on my list, Call My Bluff, nonetheless, was a nice surprise, and just like Better Than I Was, it shocks me that it was scrapped from the official streaming version. The chaotic ending is perfection. There’s something in this type of disorder that really catches my ears. Thematically, I can see a connection with No, I’m Not In Love, when Tate sings about saying that she quit love and is called out by her partner. Which, I just found out, is The Kid Laroi. This girl… she can’t seem to lose. Me neither, with this album. It’s going to be my personality for weeks (at least until something happens… we’ll see).

[gnvrh]

PlaylistsOr... Lover Boy's Calendar

To add one more thing to the list of things I care about but people normally don't, here I am sharing how I like to know the first time I heard a song. There's a reason why all my posts here, for example, are dated exactly on the date the thing I'm talking about happened, even if I'm writing a few days later. Knowing the exact moment in time that version of me was in when whatever happened is a detail I like to have about my life. The reason why I write songs or keep this blog updated is because I know I can find peace in knowing that I have somewhere to go to look back at things I thought I would never get over — or that I want to never forget. And that includes music, of course.

Back when I used Last.Fm, it was easier to track the first time I listened to a song, but those were the times. I would spend hours fixing meta tags to make sure the names of albums and tracks were correct, but now, with streaming services and the multiple re-releases of stuff, I gave up the desire to have everything perfectly organized, and then I left Last.Fm (but I miss it very dearly). Now I need to rely on my shitty memory to remember when a song first entered my life. For instance, let me write down that I discovered Friends Don't Kiss by PHIA on December 28th while at work, searching for a song that talked about friends not being supposed to kiss. Or how, at work as well on January 18th, I lost my mind over Let You Let Me Down by Donna Missal because I didn't catch the song with Shazam and had to go to Reddit to ask about it.

However, for PlaylistsOr... posts, the date of all the songs isn't usually relevant, but for the following songs, I felt like I wanted to know when they first penetrated my skin because that was the day something chemical changed inside of me. You never know when a song will change you. You never know when you will discover a track that will define your whole personality. And these songs are what I like to call "positive love songs" — the type of songs I would listen to on a morning walk to school to remind myself that I want to be defined by the things I love. That there's hope even when everything feels hopeless. And even when it seems like the lyrics I'm writing with my every breath are positive, even when they don't seem like it.

Favorite Lyrics: Can you see me? ⬩ I'm waiting for the right time ⬩ I can't read you, but if you want, the pleasure's all mine ⬩ Can you see me using everything to hold back? ⬩ I guess this could be worse ⬩ Walking out the door with your bags;

Dec 23rd, Monday, around 6pm: During my Christmas break from school, I used to spend a lot of my days... at school. I would pick up a latte (this day, a Ginger Mocha) and started my reading of Close to Home by Michael Magee (a book that I started reading in Paris inside the walls of Shakespeare and Company and that's been following me around ever since). As I was reading it and finishing my drink, I found myself in the room with this boy I briefly talked to for a few days a few months prior, but nothing ever came of it. I just sat there in the hope he would say something to me or to the walls, but he didn't. It was in that state of mind that I found Bags on a chill playlist. As soon as I did, I couldn't stop playing it on repeat.

As I poetically tried to portray in my Footsteps on Thick Layers of Snow post, soon after, I was lying on the dark floor of this classroom in my school called TD, with only the light of an open door to remind me of what illumination means. At this point in my life, I was a bit of a sad person because I thought everybody in school hated me, which made me feel very alone and isolated. Looking back now, it first takes me back to the silent encounter with this person I mentioned previously, whom I see around on random days. It makes me wonder if he ever felt alone — if that was a common feeling we shared, that even the most beautiful people on Earth couldn't avoid experiencing.

Secondly, this feeling still makes sense now, but time and wisdom clear my vision as I come to the conclusion that I definitely blew things out of proportion. As a friend would tell me months later, "It's never as bad as you think". But back then, it was. Now I look at this song with a hopeful feeling. It's now part of a playlist I created called Lover Boy, and it's there because it takes me on a positive journey through love. It's sweet to realize how I reframed this song, from sad to a reassuring companion.

Favorite Lyrics: Love is an accident waiting to happen, to me and to you;

Dec 30th, Monday, around 1am: For the longest time, I went crazy trying to remember where I first heard this song. Thanks to Shazam, I knew it was on a sleepless Monday, but where? Where? I knew it was in a movie, or maybe a TV show, but which? Which? Then it finally hit me: Sweethearts on HBO Max (a movie kind of meh, but it gave me this banger).

At this moment in my existence, I finally understood that relationships are something that should happen to us effortlessly, like falling asleep. Day by day, I am more confident that everything in my life will happen once I let go of control, and that includes everything: from acting on a stage to falling in love. I don't want to be the type of person who's always looking over his shoulder to see if I'll finally find something meaningful. I want to be surprised by it — on a Saturday night at a coffee shop, talking with a boy wearing a Peanuts gray sweater and a light blue hat.

Favorite Lyrics: Watch the world from the sidelines ⬩ Had nothing to prove until you came into my life ⬩ Gave me something to lose ⬩ Now I know what it feels like to wanna go outside ⬩ Like the shape of my outline ⬩⬩ I used to think you could hear the ocean in a seashell ⬩ What a childish thing;

Jan 19th, Sunday, around 8pm: This song came out of nowhere, and from all the ones here, it's the most important. Sidelines is the backbone of this playlist because it was the one that inspired it. For me, there are few songs that perfectly describe the sensation of being in love. For Phoebe — and I couldn't agree more — love is about forgetting all the fears one once had. Dying in a fire? Being broke again? Going to school? Nothing.

There's this beautiful but dangerous hope in believing that all it takes is one person to make it all worth it. Even though our happiness should lie inside of us, happiness was made to be shared. And, as Ödön von Horváth brilliantly said in his play Casimir and Caroline, "People are only good because they’re in a good place. They have someone they love, and they have things that make them happy".

Like a few other songs, this one also gives me hope — hope to feel like I really want to leave my house and breathe life, especially on days (mostly Fridays) when everything feels pointless. And, I mean, how can one not find it genius that it was childish to believe you can hear oceans in a seashell when you can hear it while being held by someone? What a concept. Chills. Literally, chills.

Favorite Lyrics: Then you're driving me home ⬩ And I don't wanna leave ⬩ But I have to go ⬩ You kiss me in your car ⬩ And it feels like the start of a movie I've seen before

Feb 4th, Tuesday, around 7pm: I could go on with this playlist, but Ceilings will close it. If once I discovered it on a reel and can't find it anymore, it was on a Tuesday night after school that it finally hit me. Just like Sidelines, it's more of a hopeful song for what my future may hold for me. It’s not the first song I heard from Lizzy (one day, a good friend of mine posted pictures of us with Spring Into Summer playing in the background), but it was the first that stuck.

Even though it ends on a sad tone, like Bags, I'd rather re-signify it with the movie imagery from the chorus and the idea of kissing in cars and never wanting to go home — because home is really the touch of a lip. Like many things in my life, call it manifestations. And I know I sound like a hopeless person, almost silly and cringe, but, among so many uncertainties and difficulties, that's my way of finding sanity in such unpredictable waves.

This is the perfect scenario, after all, for me to finally be better and learn how to let go of control, but I still need a thread of comfort in what I used to be. Hanging from a ceiling, carrying my bags full of accidental moments, leading me to the sidelines of who I really am. What a journey.