Feeling Pathetic – The Love Song Compilation

I promised myself I would focus on this year. I promised myself I would invest my heart and soul into my volunteer work. I promised myself I wouldn’t worry too much about the future. I’ve been absolutely successful. I feel efficient, proficient, professional, and most of all: valuable. The office is going to be shocked when I leave and they realize how much of their work I’ve been taking care of.

 

But tonight I’d really like to feel pathetic and compile all of the song quotes about love that are waiting in my journal to be used. Because it’s okay to feel lonely and to wonder. Rather than finding myself in the midst of a fluttering romance, I’ve found myself listening to everyone else talking about their partners, and I feel as alone as ever.

 

Let’s just do this, and give me the strength not to feel mortified and go back and delete it.

 

~~~

 

Two young hearts will meet in the middle and a light will flicker on, where there once was none. –The Chambers and the Valves, Dry the River

 

Should this be the last thing I see, I want you to know it’s enough for me, ‘cause all that you are is all that I’ll ever need. I’m so in love, so in love, so in love, so in love. –Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran

 

Step out into the wild, there’s a beautiful storm in your eyes, we’re perfectly intertwined and if it’s quite all right, you could be my way of life. –Into The Wild, Lewis Watson

 

Yesterday, you asked me something I thought you knew, so I told you with a smile ‘It’s all about you’. Then you whispered in my ear and you told me too, said, ‘You make my life worthwhile, it’s all about you’. –All About You, McFly

 

When we sleep at night I hope that we write novels in our minds of what to tell each other when we wake. –Novels, Rusty Clanton (Possibly the favorite of the favorites)

 

Kiss me beneath the milky twilight, lead me out on the moonlit floor, lift your open hand, strike up the band and make the fireflies dance, silver moon’s sparkling… so kiss me. –Kiss Me, Sixpence None the Richer

 

You can see it with the lights out, lights out, you are in love, true love, you are in love.

–You Are In Love, Taylor Swift

Fun story to go with this one: when my mom had been dating my dad for a few months they went to visit her parents, who lived very far away. She was telling my grandmother about how much she missed him every time he travelled and said she didn’t understand why it felt so terrible. My grandmother looked at her and said, “My sweet, beautiful, darling daughter: you are in love.” All of my relatives can quote that line of my grandmother’s word for word. Taylor’s intonation of “you” is the same as my grandmother’s was.

Speaking of my grandmother… I just remembered that a few years ago I found these slides of pictures from my grandparents’ old house (we’re going with the flow of my randomness tonight):

 

All my little plans and schemes, lost like some forgotten dream. Seems like all I really was doing was waiting for you… It’s real love. –Real Love, Tom Odell (Also all of “Grow Old With Me”)

 

My youth, my youth is yours, a truth so loud you can’t ignore. –Youth, Troye Sivan (Technically doesn’t sound like a love song, but in my mind – seeing as I haven’t yet met my person and my youth is coming to an end – I sometimes think of falling in love as deciding to share a past we didn’t have together… my youth.)

 

~~~

 

Why did I do this? I’m going to regret doing this. I’m not going to want anyone to look at my blog ever again. What am I thinking?

But, I must say, these are all fabulous songs that have been waiting to appear on my blog for a long time now. I recommend looking them all up and listening to them, because they aren’t my loves (see what I did there) simply for their words, but for their melodies too. Can we pretend I wrote this simply as a service for the greater good of blog readers, to spread the joy of music?

Ella

 

P.s. I organized the quotes in alphabetical order by the first name of the singer, because anything else felt too preferential.

 

 

I Wonder

Please give me a pass for sounding incredibly pathetic right now, but I have a mental catalog of really great hugs I’ve received. I suddenly thought of someone I haven’t seen in about a year who gave me a great hug the last time we saw each other. It was a lingering hand hug – you know, the kind where the hug is officially over but neither removes their hands quickly. It occurred to me that I might have written in my journal about that hug, so I started digging through my drawers and retrieving old diaries.

As I was looking through them, page by page, I was struck by how much I have changed and how little my life has. The entries from last year could be the ones from yesterday, and the ones from two years ago could be the ones I’ll write tomorrow. I write with more finesse, maybe, or a slight twang of additional maturity, but I’m still dealing with the same difficulties. No matter how I change, advance, grow or learn, I can’t get away from this pervasive problem of my life.

I never imagined I would graduate high school and be sick. I’ve accepted a lot and have a lot of accepting left to do, but nothing can alter the fact that I’m greatly displeased with what is happening in my life. The things I’ve been writing here for over two years, about how little control I have over what happens to me and how useless hopes seem to be, are as relevant as they’ve ever been.

Now don’t get me a wrong, I’m a pro at making the best of whatever situation I find myself in. I believe in seeing and appreciating the good as I live, and remind myself every day how important it is not to see good only in retrospect. Not to look back on a time in my life and see some good aspect of it that I didn’t realize was there at the time. So as I suffer and smile through it I make lists in my mind of everything that is good, and this helps me. Helps me some, but not quite enough. Not enough to cover the sadness.

The sadness. It runs deep, maybe through my veins or my nerves, maybe in my heart or in my soul. I prefer to be alone with it, to retreat at times and allow myself to feel it as it courses, because I have a lot to cry for. I have a lot to be thankful for, but also a lot to cry for. The pain is a constant that seems to stem from my very core and that makes no sense, but the sadness I understand from the inside out. It’s there in the silence and it resonates in music, it thrums in my ears as I walk and buzzes in front of my eyes as I sleep. It’s a part of me, an integral component in my days. I live with it and it lives in me. But I no longer wonder why.

I try to remember that maybe the fact that I can’t imagine my future means it is destined to be better than anything I ever could imagine. I read my diaries and see the process of becoming who I am right now, a person I genuinely like. I can’t put my finger on just when it happened, but I have become an adult. I think practically and reasonably about decisions in my life, and I spend so much of my time now thinking of what I’d like to do with it. What do I want to study? What shall my profession be? Where do I want to live? (How will I afford that?) Which is the ladder I would like to climb?

It’s a quick step to the spiral of anxiety, realizing no matter how I plan I cannot conquer this disease and cannot live to my fullest potential. I harbored a secret hope that after finishing high school I would start to feel better and that I’d slowly but surely rise out of the pain. But alas, I’m just as sick as I was before, and I need to start figuring out how to manage adulthood in my current state. This point in my life is about proving that even if I am sick, I can still be okay.

I remember my childhood so vividly. I remember crying and thinking that good tears should not go to waste, trying to find a parent in the house and show them my state to receive some extra hugs. The real world doesn’t dole out any extra hugs when I suffer. I no longer wonder why.

I am still, in my essence, happy. But I am still, in my reality, sad. I mourn for the things I cannot have, cannot do and cannot be. I mourn.

There’s doubt. Isn’t there always? I doubt that I will ever get better. I doubt that I will live to see a time of peace in the world. I doubt that… that…

Well, this leads us to a sore spot. I know I’m lovable, okay? I know that. It’s not one of the things I doubt. It’s just something that has yet to be proven. I feel so silly for writing this, but in a way I feel it should be recorded just the same as all my other feelings.

No one has taken an interest. I’m the last of my friends… I’ve never been asked out, never been kissed, never been the object of someone’s crush. And I know my time will come, that I just haven’t met the right person yet, and that we each have our own timelines. But it makes me wonder. I wonder: why hasn’t anyone taken an interest?

When will it be my time? My time to be healthy, my time to be loved, my time to be free…

I wonder and will continue to wonder, but one thing can be said for sure, and that is that time doesn’t stop. In this moment I am older than I have ever been before and the youngest I will ever be again, and that in itself is a beautiful thing. Maybe life won’t disappoint me.

I know we’ll be fine when we learn to love the ride.

Love,

Ella

Song Quote:

If I fell in love a thousand times, would it all make sense? –Sense, Tom Odell