I love sad girl music. Particularly breakup music that I usually can’t relate to but feel like I should. Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of sad girl music by MUNA, playing “It’s Gonna Be Okay, Baby” on loop, wondering if this track truly is about me.
“you’re gonna move to New York,” the girls tell me. They’re right.
“and experiment with communism,” they add. I nod to myself, okay.
“go down on a girl. after reading her some Frantz Fanon.” I pause for a second. My sexuality is something I’ve questioned for the sake of questioning — mentally screaming THINK HARDER when debating how much of me is me versus whom I was conditioned to be — but throughout my life, I’ve always identified as straight. (not that straight, though. I recall a phone convo with a friend this weekend — “like you’re straight, but not that straight,” they said.)
I let MUNA continue.
“and you'll go out of your way trying to find some place you can hide and get high you're gonna think about suicide.” The girls see me; they feel me. They might even be here in the room with me — the one I’m hiding in. The one in which I could get high but I won’t because I don’t like getting high because it makes me anxious and I’m already anxious, so I instead get out a jar of prescription pills I haven’t started which are meant to combat an ambush of thoughts that haven’t stopped. MUNA knows about those thoughts.
“yeah, you're gonna call your mom.” Yeah.
“it’s gonna be okay, baby, it’s gonna be okay,” they chorus, and I don’t believe them but I want to so I keep listening.
Telling someone “it’s gonna be okay, baby,” is different than telling someone it’s gonna be okay. Telling someone “it’s gonna be okay, baby,” is to tell them they are safe, cared for, mothered. My mother and I have a fraught relationship sometimes but a caring one sometimes too. The latter feels nice. I text her to see if she wants to go shopping for New York. “Let’s go!” she replies. “it’s gonna be okay, baby,” I tell myself.
MUNA keeps singing.
“you're gonna cut off your hair with dull scissors from the desk in your dorm room.”
Mid texts and types I am indeed cutting my hair. Not with dull dorm room scissors because I live in a one-bedroom and not all my hair, just the split ends, but still. Sometimes I fixate on cutting off split ends instead of fixating on thoughts. I did this after I contacted a psychiatrist to inquire about those unopened pills.
“I kinda want to see one,” a friend responded when I messaged her a comprehensive recap of my actions. I snapped a photo of a Y-shaped strand and pressed send. “I meant the psychiatrist,” she replied, “I’m cracking up.”
MUNA starts singing about moving to LA which feels a little soon given the opening refrain about New York and I'm not moving to LA so I can’t relate to that verse so I don’t like it. I keep listening though because they go on to dish about bad choices and bad sex and bad friends and dark pink wine and that all makes sense to me.
“yeah, you’re gonna lose those friends.”
I think about the relationships I pursued and those that pursued me and those that involved my head and those that involved my body and wonder if I’m the bad friend, and then decide I am. MUNA is making me sad now, regretful, ashamed, desperate for change.
I’m quoting out of order so I rewind. The line “you’re running away from the patterns you have and the decisions that you've made,” stands out to me.
“yeah,” the group and I harmonize. Because yeah, they’re right, they’re so right, they’re always right (except for LA and Frantz Fanon, maybe) But maybe that’s okay, baby? Maybe running away is okay, baby.
“you're gonna sit in the sun,” they add. And I breathe.
I love sunshine.
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