An ode to country music and the story of a broken heart
I’ve always loved country music for the stories. Not so much the ones about driving trucks down dirt roads, but the ones about how brittle yet resilient the human heart is.
“Even if I knew you’d be the one that got away, I’d still go back and get you.”
“If you made up your mind, then make it
Make this fast
If you ever loved me
Have mercy”
“You make me better than I was before, thank God I’m yours”
I’ve listened to these songs. I’ve cried to these songs. I’ve wanted so badly to feel the passion, even the hurt, that Brett Young and Cole Swindell croon about.
Six months ago, I had never been dumped before. I was in a relationship that started off like a rocket, but seemed to be running out of fuel. I found myself still listening to my favorite songs, wondering the same questions I have my entire life:
What’s wrong with me? Why am I not lovable? Why can’t I be in love like this?
My rocket of a relationship self-destructed. I blew it up. My boyfriend dumped me.
With no parachute, it wasn’t a soft landing. I laid on the floor because I was too damaged to find a couch or bed. I tried to complete small tasks in-between crying but my head was a mess.
Out of instinct, I put on some music. A few random songs and then I’ll never forget it. “Back to Me” by Chris Lane starts playing, and I break down. It hurt so bad. (To this day, I never want to hear that song again. Ever.)
It took what felt like years but was realistically about a week before I could eat, sleep, or focus on anything other than what had happened. I put music on in the car, but I honestly had trouble listening to it any other time because a lyric would hit home and I’d break down (sometimes awkwardly in coffee shops) and it’d kill my already low productivity.
The love songs, for the first time, felt relatable.
I had been in love. I had been loved.
But, now, it was all in the rear-view. I’d try to revel in breakup anthem lyrics like, “But don’t think for a second I’m out to drown your memory, baby you ain’t worth the whiskey” but even THAT somehow made me cry.
There is so much real life in country music (all music, for that matter.) So much that, in hindsight, I wish I could still naively listen to and think, “damn that sounds terrible” vs. feeling my stomach knot up because I couldn’t have written it better myself. Be careful what you wish for, folks.
It’s been a couple of months, and as much as I still wish the rocket could be repaired, the mechanic says it’s too damaged to bring back — I guess it didn’t have Elon Musk’s renewable boosters.
