Chosen Song:
“Lose You to Love Me” by Selena Gomez
Trigger Warnings & Themes:
Loss, grief, letting go, dependency/co-dependency themes.
Loss, grief, relationships, interpersonal effectiveness, identity, finding yourself, rescuing yourself, love, hope, trials and tribulations, overcoming adversity, triumph, letting go, dependency/co-dependency, growth, empowerment, moving on, regret.
Video:
Chosen Lyrics:
“You promised the world and I fell for it
I put you first and you adored it
Set fires to my forest
And you let it burn
Sang off key in my chorus
‘Cause it wasn’t yours
I saw the signs and I ignored it
Rose colored glasses all distorted
Set fire to my purpose
And I let it burn
You got off on the hurtin’
When it wasn’t yours…
We’d always go into it blindly
I needed to lose you to find me
This dance, it was killing me softly
I needed to hate you to love me,
To love, love, yeah
To love, love, yeah
To love, yeah
I needed to lose you to love me, yeah
To love, love, yeah
To love, love, yeah….I gave my all and they all know it
Then you tore me down and now it’s showing
In two months, you replaced us
Like it was easy
Made me think I deserved it
In the thick of healing, yeah….
….And now the chapter is closed and done
To love, love, yeah….
And now it’s goodbye, it’s goodbye for usSource: LyricFind“
My Interpretations/Related Experiences:
So, hi again. It’s been a while and this post is a bit of a smorgasbord of multiple things but we’re gonna go with it and wing it, right? Right. Good.
So, I heard this song a few months back, maybe even as far as Nov. 2019 and I always wanted to do a song a day entry for it and just never got around to it, got busy with other posts, forgot, lost inspiration and motivation and then it got buried underneath everything else. Because, quarantine and work and all that jazz.
But I’m here now. And that’s what counts.
I’ve been reading this book on grief, or at least trying my hardest to, (it’s a dull read but I’m so invested now that I feel like I HAVE to read it, and I don’t give up on books either soooo…) and it’s made me think of some things I’ve been both ignoring and avoiding for months now.
Which, roll the credits, brings us to this song and this message and this interpretation.
As I read about loss and I am reminded that grief is a response to any type of loss–through death of course but not always–it can be items, it can be divorce, separation, leaving relationships, moving away from relationships etc. Even pets. And so it’s made me think a little about things I purposefully and deliberately avoid and pretend like they don’t exist in my life because that’s what I DO. I’m a Master Avoider. Wish I could put it on the job apps but I keep avoiding it. 😉 😀 (Imagine a cheeky grin here.)
I haven’t dealt a lot with death in my life, yeah some pets here and there, and god knows when I was more creative with original fiction back in my high school days, it would seem like I was enthralled and mortified about the subject as that’s typically all I wrote about (death, harm and destruction) but really I haven’t lost too many people…yet. Not, not yet.
Sure, there’s been the celebrities, the waiting death reports for Athena because we can all pretty much agree that she’s not in her ED recovery and has relapsed badly but that’s a topic for another day… (that I probably won’t even get into because I’m working to actively not give in to that type of addiction, because it is so detrimental to me and my mental health, bleh.)
But without having lost people to the deep, dark chasm of death, I’ve lost people due to mental health complications and co-dependency. More so my own co-dependency on others. I think of two particular individuals for this: Steve and Luna.
With Steve, I was forcefully pulled away from them by the smart choices of my university’s Counseling Center. Every now and then, as I’ve described in few Mass Media articles back in the day, I would look up Steve online, find his accounts, find some of his information and then taunt myself with the IDEA of reaching out even though I knew it was a giant no-no (and luckily, I never did).
But Steve was from a different time ago.
Luna…Luna’s been on my mind more these days. I have more tokens, more physical items, from Luna that I cannot begin to dream about parting with. Not now, maybe not ever. The idealization is strong with me from them and I wish things could have ended differently.
And let me be clear, I was the one who left the relationship. I was the one to enact The Ultimate Avoidance into my social life as I was in my last semester of school. And I wrote about it in some articles, some I think that I still don’t even have up on my blog, (sorry about that!!!) and I got through it, but it was hard. Really hard. And I had, like this song says, to lose them to find me.
I had to lose Luna to rebuild the broken shards of glass that was myself, my identity, my soul, my worldview, my RECOVERY.
I had to realize, hell not even by myself but by my Mom and my family therapist (turned individual therapist now) June that it was NOT a healthy relationship and if I continued to try and hold onto the past with Luna and be around them, then ultimately I was choosing to return to havoc-wreaking emotions that would destroy everything in its path, especially me, and land me in self-harm, suicidal ideation, potential death and definitely a hospitalization.
And I had to realize and accept that it wasn’t healthy for me or for them and that I had to move on, move away, move forwards. And I could only do that by realizing that no one and no thing was worth getting suicidal over, a profound lesson that has still aided me even today. And I had to also realize the way I was being treated wasn’t necessarily healthy either. And that it was for my best interests to pull away. And that the relationship we had wasn’t necessarily even friendship. And that I had to forgive the fact that Luna had lacked several boundary laden territories and overextended themselves more than they should have in retrospect. And I had to come to the terms that as a friend, they had abandoned me more than once and that ultimately it wasn’t THEIR job to save me.
It was mine.
And there were red flags. More than I realized at the time, more than I could begin to fathom and certainly more than I could reasonably encounter and acknowledge, especially within my unstable mindset.
They had to pull away a couple of times, they couldn’t be there to support me and at that time all I had wanted was THEIR support. I wanted only THEM to save me, to help me, to rescue me. And I could be aware of this at times, but I still ignored what it meant.
And I didn’t realize, at the time, that there were other individuals around me who could see, sense and interpret and recognize this co-dependency.
However, what matters now, what matters most, is that I got out. I got away. And even when I cringed to see them, when my heart aches in missing them, in missing what once was, I’m so much stronger now than ever before. I’ve grown so much and I’ve developed boundaries even within myself that I don’t cross or barely ever cross anymore these days. Yes, it puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage for particular art projects but somehow, someway, I know I’ll make it through.
So for now, I cannot part with the things that Luna has given me: the art, the reminders, the memories I don’t really spend much time at all looking back on, the good that was there, the pain that was there, the bad that was there. But I keep a piece of them with me, a piece I had returned to fondness over without actually reaching back out to them.
I’ve thought about it, a few times more lately than usual, but I don’t act on it. I recognize that I can have the thought and the curiosity and that I don’t want to, I don’t need to, look into it and find out what they’re up to and what’s going on in their life. It’s over now. I’m new. And the rest doesn’t really matter.
So to this song, to what is sung here:
It reminds me of letting go of the co-dependency and finding myself from all the rubble. And I realize that I can grow and learn more about grief and the MCU hole that exists within that grief and I can prioritize and…just LIVE my life without Luna, without Steve, without even the pain most days of moving away from them. You know, it’s been almost two years since letting go and things are pretty badass lately, ahaha. I think I’m a lot happier and definitely far more stable. I have to accept the lessons I was taught and recognize my own needs and work with myself to develop better self-validating remarks and comments. Instead of seeking validation and attention from others, instead I can work on completing that myself by myself with myself.
That’s not to say I don’t reach out for supports too, because I do. It’s…a balancing act for sure, one I haven’t completely figured out yet, and that I look forward to doing so in the future. ❤ (The balance between when do I need to self-soothe and when do I need a sound board.)
I think this song is a good depiction of the troubles with idealization (putting people on pedestals and thinking they can do no wrong) and demonizing people (putting them down so low that they have flaws and only their flaws). When the reality is that people have both good and bad qualities. People are flawed. People are not all good or all bad. Grey exists in the world, especially when it comes to humans, because we’re so diverse and so special and unique one by one. It can be easy to try and see and think in absolutes, however, the world is not one big absolute thing. It’s muddled and murky and sometimes we don’t get “closure”, in fact, in this grief book I’m reading it even states how “closure” isn’t often closure itself because grief is a continuum, grief is not something you get over rather something you learn to live with and alongside as you continue your life’s journey.
And as for the life update of this post…
I’m doing pretty well, overall. I just subscribed to Disney+ and I’m pretty excited to get into that and hopefully create more online content in the form of reviews for it and because of it. The grief book has also inspired me to attend to my MCU avoidance by re-immersing myself into the entire timeline from start to finish, which will probably take me over the course of the next year and therefore help me to come to terms with my grief through the individuals and characters we so recently (it feels recent, at least) lost. I’m actually quite looking forward to this.
I have been reading somewhat here and there behind the scenes and I have plenty of blog posts to catch up on and work on and eventually, hopefully soon, publish. They include:
- My sexuality
- Book Reviews
- Film Reviews
- Fanfic stuff
- Song a day’s
- Part 2 to my Recovery and Music post
- Maybe some more interactive type posts.
I’ve also returned to all my tracking stuff in the last week and that is so far up to date currently. I’m making daily goals for myself with a few that carry over when I don’t achieve them (the reading a book to the half-way point and completion, ideally). I’m considering creating Movie Monday’s for myself and Film Review Friday’s. I still have work at Amaryllis I go to twice a week. I have fanfic ideas, particularly one inspired by covid-19, that I’m trying to pick through and work on here and there but lately, the last week, I’ve been having zero writing vibes (which obviously related to blogging issues, too). I’m juggling a lot, probably the same as usual, if I’m being honest, and I want to try and interact more online with 3-5 tweets a day and then step up my WordPress game too. I have to break down the fact that I make so much more work for myself and projects out of everything, to be honest. I reorganized my room a few times though so that’s helpful. And I’m trying to get ideas and input on how to properly set self-care time and activities for myself so if that can get going I’ll be in REALLY great standing. Additionally, I have a Youtube video I have to finish editing and then work on uploading, which, again, hopefully, I can do this week.
I will probably make a tweet soon because apparently today is my 3 year Twitter anniversary. I want to celebrate that, even within some character limits and maybe that will make me feel a little better, too.
Overall, life is going, even while life outside these walls of my home are absent, crumbling and deteriorating. I’m trying to get by as best as I can but I can definitely say I can’t wait until it’s all over. For now, I have extended loans on the 36 books I have out from the library so I will take that in stride. I’m going to go eat dinner, take my meds and watch a movie now.
Thank you all so much for reading, learning, understanding and, if you please can, commenting. I hope to return to this blogosphere more going forwards.
Thank you.
xxx ❤ ❤ ❤
Worked on: 4/23/2020, 4/27/2020
Which explains why I never heard of the Las Vegas one. </3
RecoverytoWellness 