The old vinyl record

You are my song.

When I am stuck all by myself alone with nothing but my thoughts, I cannot help but think how different our lives would be if we were not together. I used to think that being committed with one person would be this overwhelming feeling of adventure and a rollercoaster of emotions, because we were always desperately craving for each other’s presence that we just could not get enough of it. Like the way I used to thirst for the smell of cigarettes at the back of my hand, or the way you never stopped asking for your favorite dinner. I always thought that this was always going to be a walk in the park, or like staying up late at night without setting an alarm for the next morning. You were the first song I was drawn into because I understood your lyrics, and the rhymes that always pulled me in so deep that I drown in your melodies. The next thing I know, I was playing you on loop, I knew the exact words until your last verse, and you were running on my mind day and night.

Until those lyrics, the words that were able to transform my feelings into something worth grasping, turned into gray skies and cold summers. Your song, which kept playing on repeat, got exhausting. It pierced through my ears and suddenly I wanted you to stop, like a freshly brewed hot cup of coffee that I suddenly wanted to spit out because it was burning. I wanted to get rid of it--the verses but not the melodies; the heat but not the caffeine. Again, I desired for the adrenaline. I wanted something else, something different. Something that could make me feel the way I felt about you the moment we became each other’s firsts.

The cold summers did not end, so I searched for a distinct song. It was like going into a vinyl record store, where every kind of music, from indie to ballad was there. Vinyl records were stacked everywhere, just like how I kept my eyes open in search for another version of you. I listened to every love song that had verses I could listen to for days and swept me off my feet. They were perfect, and they were new. Some made me cry, others made me wonder why I never had them in the first place, and a few made me smile. Gray skies were slowly turning back to the way they were, or so I thought.

As I was listening to those tracks, I felt like something was missing. Like I forgot something important on the first day of the semester, or it was as if something that I felt uneasy and anxious about. Those songs I mistook as lyrics that would change the way I descry the world, are just the songs that gave me the illusion that I will be fine without you. “I will give you everything” is not that same as “You are my everything”. The latter is you, and you will be my first and my last. No matter how hard I try to find something else, something better, I would always end up throwing those records—because they will never be you. In the end, I do not need adventure, or even a roller coaster just to feel the butterflies in my stomach whenever I hear your song. No matter how many times I will hear your verses and how predictable they would be,

I would still choose you over and over again.

And I hope you would the same for me too.

#blog #journal