soundtrack of the better days

Part 1: This is for the Loners (Teenage Angst Playlist)

Warning: Brief mention of suicide.

This playlist is an update to my current standing in life. While Part 1 was darker with moody songs that evoked loneliness and sadness, Part 2 is brighter, slightly more saccharine and feel-good. The playlist, which is separated in acts, goes over important milestones in my life such as when I met my husband and when I gave birth to our son. Soundtrack of the better days is exactly what it sounds like, the official soundtrack of the better days of my life- which is also a reminder to those who have gone or currently going through similar feelings of what I went through during my teen years and early twenties, that life does get better.

♡

ACT I: falling in love

1. Cage the Elephant - Come a Little Closer

It was a humid night in September 2018 when we sat in your modded Jeep in the parking lot of the local movie theater. We were on the nth hour of our first date and had returned after having a few drinks at nearby restaurant. While waiting for the show time beginning of a movie we listened to each other's music and talked. The conversation flowed. I played you some Kimbra and Bob Moses, and you played some Flobots and Weezer. But this was also one of the songs you introduced me to. This was a song that struck me as an ode to my early teenage years sound-wise. It had that indie vibe that I liked. I felt comfortable with you. You accepted me, my awkwardness, my shy demeanor, and the fact that I was almost an hour late to our first date. Strange enough, I felt close to you.

At the end of the night, we kissed for the first time and the fact that you were eager to see me again (the very next day) warmed my heart. Thinking back on that night, it feels magical. We were two people that were curious and eager to get to know one another. At that time we didn't know that our beginning had just begun and where life was going to take us and it all began with a right swipe on Bumble.

2. Kacey Musgraves - Happy & Sad

And I'm the kind of person

Who starts getting kinda nervous

When I'm having the time of my life

It's when things begin looking too good to be true when self-sabotage creeps in its ugly head. Anxiety kicked in on our second date and I told you that I didn't want "to mess this up", because I had caught feelings too fast once before, and twice again and got my feelings hurt over and over. One month before I met you, I found myself sobbing while driving home because someone told me they "weren't looking for a relationship right now" after leading me on.

Maybe I was naive, but the past was a learning lesson. Though the feeling of it all being too good to be true persisted. No one was supposed to like me, or that was what I persuaded myself because it was easier.

We were just floating in our highs, collecting our dopamine hits with the possibility of a new romantic relationship. I admired your confidence with your good posture and how good you looked in uniform, then how endearing, soft-spoken, and caring you were. When I heard this song I realized it summed up my feelings for you to a T. I like you a lot, but I didn't know where you stood even though your actions were just as eager as my own.

Then that same week of our first date, four days later it was a Saturday night and we had attended a cookout at your coworker's house. You were driving us back to town when you told me you considered me to be your girlfriend. I played this song for you ecstatic because I finally had an answer to everything.

3. Bob Moses - Here We Are

Early October we sat around a campfire in South Carolina. Camo tent pitched and Jeep stationed beside it with music playing, we sat with beers cracked open talking about life and then this song came up on Spotify. Bob Moses was a duo I introduced you to as I had discovered their music during my last year of college. I was amazed because I had never heard this song and I liked it because it was chill.

Later that month we attended a Bob Moses show in Carrboro, which was the second concert I have ever attended after Dawn Richard's Redemption tour a couple of years before in Allston, MA. That night in Carrboro also seemed surreal. I had been mulling over who I would be going with to this show for months, and then you came into the picture and was interested in accompanying me.

That night I sported my natural hair in an afro with hesitation, but you liked it. Trails of your cigarette smoke led us to Cat's Cradle and you with your lopsided smile and glazed-eyed wonder, were tired from pulling an all-nighter playing video games with your adopted brother. Amongst the crowd of people who sported an edgier style, we definitely seemed like the odd ones out at the venue with the stares we got. We oozed the aura of new love, which may have been vomit-inducing over our bottles of Heineken, but I enjoyed myself as I was free with the crowd.

At the end of the night, we got pictures with Tom and Jimmy, and you even got a picture with the awesome bass player that night who told you his parents attended the show. Then we walked back to your Jeep and talked and laughed a bit while you smoked as we stared at the tour bus in the parking lot before we took off back to my small town.

Then just last year we were sitting at the local Supercharger when I heard a familiar artist sound on the radio, and sure enough, Bob Moses was on the radio with their song "Love Brand New".

♡

ACT II: bound in love

4. Chronixx - Black is Beautiful

They never told us that black is beautiful

They never told us, black is beauty

Suddenly a major time skip to the 2020 Covid lockdown. We were living in your home state, fourteen hours away from NC. I was out of work for two months due to my job not being essential. I remember having a lot of fear of the unknown, a lot of fear of getting Covid and dying. I remember you got orders for your reserves unit to deploy to the west coast to help out there. You were so stressed you started smoking again because you weren't sure what I should do, if I should go home because you didn't know how long you would be deployed. I was also scared to lose you.

I spent almost two weeks alone with our dog at our apartment. It was an odd time, and very isolating. When protests broke out over police brutality during that time, I felt stifled and hopeless as I kept up with the news on social media. I could not protest with my lack of knowledge of the surrounding area and lack of friends/acquaintances. I wanted to do something, but the only thing I could do was begin an embroidery design I never finished. I found this song in a Spotify playlist and it touched my heart because I connected with it.

For a long time in my life, I've struggled with low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. As I've gotten older I've learned to love myself a bit more by sporting my natural hair and not caring about what I perceive people think about me. Chronixx's song is an ode to this fact, that growing up a lot of us black girls didn't have people telling us that we were beautiful as a lot of beauty standards equated whiteness or lightness to being prettier- which goes into colorism, which is an entirely separate story on its own. It's hard to undo the years of backward thinking, but "Black is Beautiful" is a reminder that my skin, my hair, and my people are beautiful.

5. AURORA - Exist for Love

And then I learned the truth

How everything good in life seems to lead back to you

And every single time I run into your arms

I feel like I exist for love

Only for love

Fast forward to 2021. Late 2020 we closed on a house together. In November you popped the question and I got to pick out my engagement ring and plan a micro wedding. I showed you this song because I found it randomly on Youtube. I declared that it was going to be our wedding song because it was beautiful and made me think of you. You liked it and agreed and I said I was probably going to cry during it (I didn't).

Then in early May 2021, a few weeks before our wedding, I got a surprise positive pregnancy test. Later that month there was an itty bitty baby in my uterus as we danced round and round to this song at our beachfront wedding in South Carolina. Round and round we went awkwardly until you signaled for the music to stop. We regretted not figuring out our first dance steps beforehand because we aren't dancers and suck at improvising, hence our continuous loop of turning around in circles.

6. Grimes - So Heavy I fell Through the Earth

"[...] lyrically, the song is kind of about when you decide to get pregnant or agree to get pregnant. It’s this weird loss of self, or loss of power or something. Because it’s sort of like a future life in subservience to this new life. It’s about the intense experience deciding to do that, and it’s a bit of an ego death associated with making that decision.

- Grimes" (source)

This song became special to me when I learned it was about pregnancy. This song I felt represented my second and third trimester of my pregnancy. The third trimester I felt like I was literally so heavy I could fall through the earth as my baby sat low. But this song was also one that I felt like I bonded with my baby over as I listened to it while driving around town. I visualized meeting my little one as I waited patiently for his arrival. But the music also represented the mix of emotions I was continuously suspended into, and the not so pretty physical symptoms of pregnancy.

Pregnancy itself for me was a very intimate time of my life that was also extremely anxiety-inducing that also required patience to the mess of hormones inside my body. Creating a bond with my little one as he grew inside of me was a special time and when I gave birth I missed that closeness, where the fullness inside of me was now empty leaving behind a wrinkled mess of an abdomen.

7. Christina Perri - you mean the whole wide world to me

Darling you mean the whole wide world to me

Darling you light up everyone you meet

With a smile you give away so easily

Darling you mean the whole wide world to me

Dear my little one,

I gave birth to you on your father's birthday. You were the best birthday present, but it wasn't the best day for him as I was laboring and in pain for much of it. So in a way, that day was a bit depressing, but we both got to meet tiny big you!

I played Christina Perri's lullaby albums during my third trimester and for much of your infancy. Little you swaddled in your sleep sack staring up at me as lullabies filled the room. Little you with your small smile and coos. Little you who has grown so much. This was your song before you were even born, and even more so after. You were always smiling at everyone whenever we went out in public and still kinda do in your toddler stage.

Little you who means the world to me, always and forever. I love you.

Love,

Mom

♡

ACT III: Nostalgia, Mourning and Grieving

8. Grimes - You'll miss me when i'm not around

I shot myself yesterday

Got to Heaven anyway

Hey B,

It doesn't hurt as much as it used to, but I'll never forget that night. I'll never forget holding my one-month-old in my arms. Never forget my mom crying on the phone as she said she didn't believe it. Never forget the struggle of trying to put it all together. Never forget crying, the disbelief... Never forget mentioning how a character in the second season of Raising Dion looked like you to my husband not even a week before. Never forget my uncle's post on your Facebook page for you to answer your phone that morning. Never forget your name appearing on the likes of my baby's photo of him at 2 weeks old, haunting me. Never forget the dreams of me screaming at the sky asking why, hoping you would somehow answer my questions. Never forget our childhood memories, of the summers we all spent together. Never forget how you reminded me of myself as growing up you were quiet too. Never forget the last video chat we had when you were with the family at a Christmas gathering, how awkward it was for both of us as we stared at each other trying to figure out what to say. Looking back I wished I said something more, I wish I could have told you that life will get better. Or maybe that I wanted to go hiking with you and my husband and that was one of the things I secretly wanted to do as life took you back to NC when it took me away.

Deeply inquisitive, intelligent you.

I still wonder why, but does it even matter at this point?

All I know is we won't ever forget you. No never.

I will tell my son about you when he's older. About how you were, how you always visited grandma. How grandma loved you so whenever you did visit. How he would've like you too.

I will never forget you.

Love you cuz, ES

I relistened to this song one night and as morbid as it seemed, the beginning of the song was you and I began to accept it.

(Another song that somewhat reminded me of you, when I listened to it.)

Beacon - Can't Turn Back

I'm alive / Cease fire / I kept time / In the constant dark

9. Rina Sawayama - Holy (Til' You Let Me Go)

I was innocent when you said I was evil

I took your stones and I built a cathedral

Found my peace when I lost my religion

All these years I wished I was different

This song I fell in love with listening to Hold The Girl album. It captured me instantly because of the chorus and I felt like it summed up my unhealthy relationship with religion and the hate I've had for myself.

I've felt like I've been stronger mentally by distancing myself away from religion since I've moved away from my family. I grew up as a child terrified of the idea of predetermined millenarianism, yet we're still waiting for the second coming of Christ. Nice to know I spent most of my childhood terrified and wondering about the rapture and whether if I was good enough to go to Heaven (not). I still get triggered whenever my family brings up that Jesus is soon to come, which suspends me back into time where I was that little girl afraid of death and dying and wondering why I was the only one that was scared.

As for the lyric "All these years I wished I was different", I know the song represents something else, but for me, I connected to it as I've always wished I never had social anxiety because no one has ever really understood me which is very lonely. Now that I have a little family of my own, those feelings aren't as bad.

10. AKTHESAVIOR - Flowers

If you plant a seed, and nurture it, it'll grow

No difference from your dreams, don't quit, stay on that road

This life is full of risk - sometimes, the sun won't show

But that light resides within all life that's on this globe

After giving birth to my son I feel like I've connected a lot more to music than before. There was a long period of time where I was either bored or didn't really care for anything that I was listening to, and then suddenly there are so many songs I can relate to. There are so many songs that also remind me of the past and even though becoming a mother has been a great shift in my life. I've also mourned my old self and realized I should have done this or that, but I have also come to accept that I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't go through all the hardships of the past.

Flowers, in particular, I feel like sum up the breadth of my art/embroidery portfolio as flowers are very important symbols in my illustrations and artwork. Flowers are about growth and cycles in life. I also felt like this song was an extremely positive and uplifting song that's also incredibly inspiring.

11. Lexie Liu - dance dance

This song reminds me of Friday or Saturday nights I spent in my dorm room during college having fun watching Kdramas late into the night with special meals I concocted using my coffee maker or microwave. It's a fun song and I realize I miss the times where I could just chill and watch a good Asian drama or movie without a toddler screaming at me. Despite that, those memories also bring up the loneliness I felt in the past as I spent most of my time in college alone. The lyrics: Don't know why I'm shy / I kill every vibe / Stay home Friday nights / They take me out, I'll just cry - are so me. Liu's The Happy Star album is pretty much A+ and one of my favorite albums of 2022.

12. Jean Dawson - SICK OF IT*

Sick of it, on the cliff

Nosedive, I'm the new black oblivion

Off the shit, over it

Live and die with my motherfuckin' happiness

I recently found Jean Dawson from Kilo Kish's "CHOICE COWBOY" on her AMERICAN GURL album. His Spotify page bio reads as "the life and times of a boy exploring identity, intimacy, and escapism", so that really interested me to check out his music and I fell in love. A lot of the instrumentals in songs on CHAOS NOW* make me feel nostalgic. My husband and I tend to listen to a lot of early 2000s alternative rock together and somewhat the songs on the album transport me back to the feeling of those days- days full of watching Dragon Ball Z or playing the games on PS2 and watching cartoons with my cousins. A lot of the guitar parts really are nice to my ears as well.

"SICK OF IT*" has one of those nostalgic feeling openings where it's like the start of an anime of some sort and I just feel like it's a fun song. Despite that, lyrically I connect it to my earlier feelings of self-sabotage with my relationship in the early days. That I should've just enjoyed it all, because in the end now I'm married, have a kid, and despite the hardships that pop up now and then, life is great. But a good quote that stuck with me while watching another video of Dawson's was:

"I'm just a fucking kid. I'm trying to figure it out, just like you."

- Jean Dawson (source)

And maybe that's all that life is. We're all just trying to figure it all out.

Full Playlist w/ extras: