What I Listen to On Repeat...

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I sang along to this song alone in my tent, which sat in the backyard of my dad's then-girlfriend. I had been obsessing over my friend for a year, it started to feel like my identity. There wasn't a passing day where I didn't think about contacting him, but it changed from the innocent want of hanging out on the swings or holding hands to fantasies of getting one of the guns out of his uncle's closet and ending myself while he watches. I felt like I had nothing. The college I wanted to go to felt so far away and the friends I clung onto since middle school had lives of their own since my family moved. I thought moving closer and staying at my estranged biological dad's would bring me closer. Instead, I opened up the past and realized that I didn't have the same bond with my father as I had when I last saw him, 5 years earlier. Instead- with no transportation, no money, no skills- I felt stuck and far away from my mother. Instead, I was realizing that if my mom hadn't married my toxic step-dad, my sibling wouldn't have been in an abusive situation and my family wouldn't feel torn apart when I left and convinced my dad to take in my teenage sibling. Instead, despite living the previous summer in tents after my mom couldn't afford rent, nearly a year later I missed the freedom of staying outside.

I heard "Too Close" so often that I had learned to ignore it: on the radio, in stores... Some pop song where the singer's voice honestly reminded me of a bleating goat. Sometimes it only takes once listening to a song closely, while in the right mood, for its claws to sink in your mind. I sat in my dad's car with the radio on. The words clicked in the way a self-help book would: "This is what he was trying to tell me..." In my head the lyrics were sang by an old friend gradually ghosting me as I clung harder. I listened to this song over and over again as a reminder. Months later, I went into an online relationship with a woman ten years my senior. I felt like it was suffocating, as if her emotional well being rested on my shoulders. I was just 19, and I didn't feel ready or "adult enough" for a romantic relationship. I took the shoes of Alex Clare: not being able to reciprocate what she wanted.

I wandered outside the public library, a toothbrush hanging outside my pocket. My dad took me to his work after his now-ex girlfriend tried kicking me out of the house. We now both stayed in a tent outside his exes house while he searched for an apartment. I would wait for him get off work while wandering around the library. While walking, I would listen to this song on repeat, sometimes I would run and dance down the streets or on the lawn because it made me feel free. I felt so stuck in my head, and I could hardly hold a conversation even with those closest to me. It was like my brain was barely connected to my mouth anymore, and thoughts would spin in circles in my head.

With my earbuds in, this song appeared to echo at me though the woods at night as I walked through a nature trail across the road to the apartment complex my dad moved to. I found this song on a demo album trying to find more of Evanescence's music that I hadn't heard before. I spent just over two years living with my dad. I became a shut-in. I refused work, school or meeting any new friends. Amy Lee's voice appeared to be talking directly to me. I thought about, and even attempted, running away multiple times. Yet, I didn't have any connections outside my family anymore, so there were no options for roommates, no friends to lend a hand if I ended up homeless. I clearly needed therapy, but I didn't know how to get my own transportation or money or insurance to get to appointments on my own and my family members were reluctant to help.