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are you satisfied with an average life?

another coming of age story nobody asked for

By idrialPublished 4 years ago 19 min read
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a long winded piece on how the internal soundtrack of my mind evolved over a decade

It was 2010. Placebo had just released some "new" album (likely Covers) and I noticed it was available on iTunes just when I needed it. I knew it was just a bunch of re-released bonus tracks, but its timeliness was satisfying. I was not doing well.

It was 2010 and I was fresh out of a breakup of a 7 year relationship.

It ended painfully.

It was not a healthy relationship; I ended it abruptly when it became necessary. I was able to get back on my feet safely, but it still involved moving three thousand miles away from where I had been carrying on my young adult life. One of the red flags that I had confronted was the fact that my ex had been a heavy gas-lighter.

I had friends and family independently come to me with that quite specific concern to the point that it could no longer be ignored. I was getting identical feedback from people that didn't know each other. I was the only mutual connection. My partner at the time was an acquaintance from their collective perspective. They were independently telling me a shared list of concerns. One of the shared concerns was that technically abuse was involved. They were urging me to do something for my safety.

I brought it up with my therapist; she shook her pen in the air wordlessly for several minutes. I became confused at the gesture. Was she expecting me to say something else? She broke the silence after I began to feel a bit uncomfortable.

"I know I am being unprofessional but I urge you to leave and go be safe."

I listened to her. My support system embraced me and that was that. Or so we agreed it could be.

Yet I was left feeling like I no idea who the fuck I was and it was embarrassing.

I wasn't sure how to process the dramatic resolution to my relationship and the life I chose to leave behind. I was 25, back in my hometown, and starting fresh. I simply knew I needed to process everything on my own terms. I knew this was a gift and a rare opportunity.

It wasn't clear either what exactly I should be doing with myself. I had plans to slow things down and carefully sort out my next steps. That plan went out the window because I am perpetually restless. I cannot sit still. I think best in motion. I had to find something to do with my time while my thoughts simmered over a low flame for my own sanity.

I had a few things to work with: I was college educated and had almost 18 months of skilled work experience in software. I have a very dry sense of humor, which generally translates well to software engineering geek culture. I feel things very deeply and have been drawn to activities that allow me to express it with gusto. When I realized I can make a career from my software engineering skills, I threw myself into a workoholic lifestyle.

Even then, I was dimly aware of the fact I was capable of bringing my taste for work to a potentially toxic level. At that point in my life, I was choosing to ignore the fact I knew this about my personality. I actually craved the demands I was put under, and it was the career path that 16 year old me would have been excited to look forward to.

I was a bit self conscious of how shallow it might be to just casually revert to tackling all the "bucket" goals where I emotionally left off, but I wasn't sure where else to start. I needed to be good at this while I processed everything that happened.

Another thing I realized during this point in my life was that the act of processing and confronting my my own feelings required flooding myself with music. I was already familiar with this ritual from the teenage years - once the correct music was chosen and reverberated in the appropriate way, then I could work through that self confrontation and get that cathartic release I was seeking.

I also craved a feeling of organization.

The intersection of these desires resulted in spending a significant amount of time trying to restore a music collection that I had purchased via iTunes. My Macbook at the time died a frustratingly coincidental death alongside my fresh start. I was carefully picking apart everything I ever owned to have a "clean" digital collection going forward. My motivation also was to indulge the desire to have a well tuned playlist for my frustratingly tedious commute to the Greater Boston Area. I needed a good play list to be successful.

Placebo had just released a bonus disc as a stand alone album that was perfect. Placebo was the perfect summation of my emotional state as a sound. It was obvious I would immediately purchase it on impulse alone.

Placebo had been my teenage love affair. It was my guilty pleasure. I couldn't get enough of the bonus tracks. I planned playing Running Up That Hill at least four times a day. It was part of my commute ritual.

I had been working enough at this point to know how critical it was to commute in a good mood... or at least how commuting needs to be done in such a way that it was therapeutic in some way or your entire day could be ruined. I grew up in a family with both parents working. The family had a carefully orchestrated commute to make sure everybody was where they needed to be. I was already well educated in planning one's schedule around leveraging the time spent commuting without resorting to inappropriate behavior. Due to this, I knew a few things about my own habits and preferences quite well.

I've never really been a huge fan of listening to the radio. The DJ's chatter is quite annoying to me. I also notice that the ads sneak up on me just as I feel my patience slip. Patience is a requirement for driving appropriately.

Unlike public transit, I couldn't read in the car, which was my only other experience with commuting. During my college years in particular, I was perpetually reading my coursework while on the bus. I usually timed it so that I would do a second reading of test material the night before the exams so that the material was reinforced in my mind. There was also this one set of essays that was simply soothing to read, so I made a habit of reading them frequently. The readings were planned out in a specific sequence so that I would be sure I would read the test materials enough times before the exam. I would also budget time to read the "soothing" materials.

It was predictable. It worked. I had always found reading a reliable way to pass the time and perform well on whatever was requested of me.

The name came from the fact I had a literal bookcase for the physical copies of everything. My morning commute's reading was one end of the bookcase; the evening commute was on the other end. I ended up referring to planning the reading lists as "book ends" in my bullet journal. Since I went to college during the turn of the century (yes, the 21st century. I started college in 2002) I had a bizarre monster of a filing system that was half digital and half a massive pile of photo copied articles from the library. Listening to music on public transit used up too much battery for my taste, so I read instead of listening to music. I allowed myself music for the last 5 minutes only.

Part of my organization ritual was figuring out what the reading schedule was for my "morning commute" and what was on the schedule for my "evening commute" and make sure everything was in the correct color coded binder. The reading materials had their own schedule of being rotated from my "storage" in my home office and filed into one of my "bookends" for commuting.

My commute was completely planned out and orchestrated. I had set it up so that if I followed it diligently, every week I had exactly what I needed summed down to two different bags - morning commute and evening commute. It was one of those "behind the scenes" things that was a pretty critical cornerstone of my success as a college student. I knew if I spent the time figuring out the schedule and executed it, the outcome could be predicted within reason.

I wanted to bring that theme back from my student days into my new life as a professional.

I decided to still view my commute like those bookends on a bookcase - an asset used during the process. In the morning commute, I had 45 minutes to sort out what I needed to get out of my system (or in) before performing my best at work. Then I had 45 minutes in the evening.

In short, I had 90 minutes of time to play with to ground myself back to wherever I needed to be to get through my week.

In short, I needed to figure out how to get my composure so that I could do my stressful job. Nothing really all that fancy.

Since I was driving a car, I was able to leverage using my iPhone as a personal boombox while staying charged. The freedom to make rich playlists for my commute was an exciting project for me at the time.

The natural choice would have been to pad the list with music that assisted with whatever suits what I felt like was the "theme" of my mood lately.

The mood at the time was raw confusion.

Placebo has always echoed a mood that sums up the complicated relationship I have with expressing my own emotions - this kind of smirking, brutally honest, nihilistic, beautiful cynicism. I have always appreciated the way that Placebo juxtaposes bleakness and sadness with overtones of hope. It's perfect for when I want to simply just feel unapologically raw about whatever is going on.

It's a great starting point.

Placebo was perfect when I was an emotional teenager and sorting out my head. It seemed apropos to me that it also soothed an emotional mess of a broken hearted 20-something. I wanted an honest purging of my emotions, so I indulged my hunger for marathons of Placebo.

Driving to and from the office, Covers was the backdrop to orienting myself in this new phase of my life. Periodically issues from my past would resurface in the most random and unexpected of ways. I kept the memories of the abuse that occurred very close to my heart even as I examined it.

I let myself bleed out all my sadness, grief, frustration, regret, and hope during those car rides. I had tailored my commute into ritual in sync with Running Up That Hill. It would always end right as I pulled out the car keys and officially started my work day.

I didn't care why that song was keeping me going through each day. It worked and I found that satisfying enough.

Some nights, the commute wasn't long enough to listen to it "enough." When I would get home, I would play the album again a few more times. Even though it didn't seem like I was doing anything, I know those nights I spent staring at the ceiling with the speakers up inappropriately loud were some sort of late night homework.

I was absorbing the music, letting my thoughts drift.

Unpack another box, I'd coax myself. I'd go through a few belongings and intrusive thoughts would bubble up. I'd put the box down, lie down on my bed and look at the ceiling while Placebo continued murmur in the background.

Nah, buy new stuff, I decided. Make new memories. But don't throw anything out. You will be ready someday. It's ok you don't want to unpack anything right now. Just build everything new.

This was a good strategy to nourish myself back to where I was before the relationship, I felt, but I knew that meant I eventually was going to hit a plateau. I needed to be exposed to new ideas, new sounds, new perspectives, new stories. Simply "returning" back to who I was before the relationship happened wasn't really going to work beyond a certain point.

I was looking for a cue; some sort of direction to go towards.

My life as a single, career-focused, city dweller was only partially satisfying the restlessness that I was chasing. It was a frustration I couldn't quite put into words, so I turned back to my playlists. I asked friends for recommendations to find inspiration for new material to put in my collection. Nothing was hitting the mark.

I gave up after a bit. The day to day rhythms of normal life passed the time. I was visiting my family and catching up. Usually we give 30 second reviews of books, games, music, TV, etc. My sister was playing something that she was into at the time, and I sharply asked her what it was as it was playing.

"Marina and the Diamonds. And you have to actually watch this video to fully appreciate it."

When I first watched this video, I felt a bizarre sense of deja vu despite knowing I had not seen nor heard the song before. I felt like the video captured a side of me that was desperately trying to find a voice. It was a side of me that had been suffocated during my long term relationship. It was a feeling that found clarity in Marina's music.

I had been harshly criticized to the point that I had gotten in the habit of talking myself out of working towards my goals. I had been told that I was "unreasonable," a "perfectionist" and "ridiculous." My standards were too high and I needed to stop and back off and know my place. It was a lecture that had been used to berate me. It was one I felt like rebelling against.

I was captivated by her work. I went through her entire album on YouTube and immediately bought it on iTunes.

Within a few hours I was restructuring my playlist to include Marina and the Diamonds into my commute. I was curious if I would like the transition. I had been commuting with Placebo for several years at this point.

I was exploring the idea of confidence in my new life. That was a theme that Placebo wasn't exactly the best in helping me navigate. I found Marina fascinating because her approach was not one that came naturally to me. I felt a satisfying synergy with her music despite it being a dramatic change. I was done mourning the life that fell apart and I was moving onto the life I was building.

I found Marina's elegance an interesting thread against my experience as a professional woman in software engineering. My introduction into office politics and fashion expectations from women in corporate culture was a challenge I was eager to confront. I wanted to succeed. It was natural that my playlists phased out Placebo and was more geared towards material that could rev me up for a long day navigating internal personalities.

I started each day with Are you Satisfied. It had a lot of lyrics that echoed my own frustrations. The big one is dealing with moving on from shitty situations that were out of your control.

I was pulling out my hair

The day I got the deal, chemically calm

Was I meant to feel happy

That my life was just about to change?

It was her exhaustive question - are you satisfied - that resonated so strongly with me. That was the keystone to why the relationship had failed in the first place. I was not satisfied.

My problem is my problem that I never am happy

It's my problem, it's my problem on how fast I will succeed

Are you satisfied with an average life?

Do I need to lie to make my way in life?

High achiever, don't you see?

I was trying to build a life that was not compatible with theirs. The relationship was doomed to fail before it escalated to the point that it had. Marina gave me the tools to be able to emotionally process not only the hurt that I had felt in that relationship, but to begin to acknowledge the hurt that I was responsible for myself.

Marina could also deliver on articulating any lingering regrets I still had in my system. I was learning who I was and examining each piece, including the ugly ones.

But I was also learning to reexamine pieces I had previously not valued. The clarity that Marina spoke of her frustrations and unrelenting drive were presented as something to celebrate. I had been spending the past 7 years of my life curbing all those urges.

Marina made those urges sound beautiful. I found it a curious thing that I could perhaps appear as confident and charming as her simply by changing my attitude and owning these traits in my personality. She offered a new perspective about what I had a right to loudly express frustration over.

Her music filled me with an energy that I needed to push through onto the next phase of my life with the fresh perspective I had been seeking. When I feel like I was bursting at the seams, a play through her entire album got me through some of the most stressful times of my career. I would always end my jam sessions it with Primadona Girl to boost my mood. It was my little rebellious mantra.

You can count on me to misbehave

The boost I got from this song eventually produced a body of work that spoke for itself. I enjoyed being rewarded for a traditional job well done.

I was able to pull back a bit from my workaholic tendencies and think about where is all this effort was going. I had no idea how to slow down, but I was at least trying to "zoom out" a bit.

I ended up playing a bit of a game with myself after talking with a friend.

We were discussing gammification after exchanging some articles published in the news. We were discussing in particular Habitica - the app that turns your todo list into a video game. We were discussing this hypothetical exercise:

  • If you were a Dungeons and Dragons character, but the level that is your ideal 5 year plan, what would that character sheet look like?

The idea is it's an interesting way to break the ice with your own brain and get creative. I was sorting out my priorities and long term dreams by projecting onto this fictional self. I had even written a few stories for fun to explore certain goals. I shared my experience with this experiment with another friend of mine after having a few passing conversations with other mutual friends. It seemed to be an experiment that people found interesting to discuss so I was widely sharing it with my friends. Everyone found it a helpful bit of fun despite how silly it seemed we were engaging in such an activity in our mid 30s.

So I shared the story behind this game and what I had been up to with my Particularly Good Friend. She's one of those "gab daily" type of friends. We are always chit chatting about all sorts of things through out the day. We can vent to each other. We can share weird things with one another without judgement. We talk through anxieties. It's the sort of relationship that I needed to stay out of dark places with dark thoughts in strange corners.

We take care of each other.

I had been struggling hard. My health had trampled all over my career and I was jolted into a new era of trying to sort out what is Normal.

So I told her about this silly game that I had been playing with another friend of mine. She thought the idea was interesting. More time passes.

At some point I was blabbing the latest bits of news to her. I had been trying to keep her updated while stressing I was still hopeful. I wasn't making much "progress" towards my goals but was telling her what was keeping me determined and motivated. I was babbling how I was using that experience to make my silly story about that fictionalized version of me more interesting. I was trying to describe how it was a nifty trick for accessing my feelings about things and working through them. It was a great coping strategy for dealing with my health problems. I paused the conversation to avoid flooding my friend.

She surprised me by sharing a link to a song she had been putting together. She said that she had been thinking about me a lot lately and she couldn't help but bring this into being. When I was listening to this song, I was reminded of the stories I had shared with her about this fictional character that was part of my coping strategy.

I was mindblown. She had captured the mood of trying to navigate this next phase of my life. I have discussed here in detail how I am quite familiar with finding music to unpack my own feelings. It's part of my methodical self care. I spin through my rolodex like collection of music and get it out of my system. It's reliable. It's predictable.

What I had not experienced before was the opposite... experiencing what music can be made from communicating my feelings to others. I had never been moved to tears listening to a song before, but this one moved me on an unprecedented cathartic level. I have had no other experience comparable to it. I wept openly for several minutes. Raw, gross, stinging tears. But I felt amazing afterwards. I love this song to bits.

It's a perfect song that's the current internal soundtrack of my mind. Enjoy.

humanity
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About the Creator

idrial

I'm already a cyborg

30 something DevOps software engineer recovering from four spine surgeries

code, knit, crochet, hook, cook, bullet journal, geek

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