nobody’s supposed to be here

In my headphones, Deborah Cox’s slowed voice has a haunting comfort in this chopped and screwed version of “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here” I’m listening to right now. It’s like everything in this late-night cafe is creating the perfect environment for me to be present with my thoughts and emotions. The red and blue lights in here match the purple tones playing in my ears that make the song fully immersive. The rage and sadness within me create the same hue in my soul. I don’t even want to say anything anymore. I have such little capacity for explaining myself these days because I don’t doubt that there’s a shared experience about the pain of deeply resonating with these lyrics. And if we both feel that, then we should just hold each other in silence.

Because of the internet, my mind and life are so full of these profound clichés but I heard recently that every emotion is accompanied equally by its opposite. The deeper you love something, the deeper the grief of losing it becomes, and it’s so obvious it feels stupid to call it profound, which is probably a great definition of what a cliché is. But these obvious truths work for my low-effort approach of expression right now because I’ve used so much of my energy trying to hold every unlovable part of myself in that it feels like overexpenditure to open up once I’m already exhausted. My experiences have made my truest expressions of love and honesty such a high-risk scenario because, outside of rare circumstances, as soon as they make their appearance, they’re rejected, denounced, and abandoned.

So we say whatever when it’s not. We say we understand when we don’t. That we’ll try our best when we won’t. That we’re good when we aren’t.

In these moments, knowing that a song like “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here” exists to carry me through keeps me alive. And if you’ve been in this space, then let’s just hold each other.