You’d come over, right?
It kinda hit me out of the blue. I was browsing through Youtube when I saw it, and I couldn’t help but clicking on it. The song. One of many masterpieces from Julia Michaels and the absolute genius with an angel voice JP Saxe. His voice alone makes me sad in a level almost no one else can. It’s a good kind of sad, though. One that makes me come here and write a whole post about it.
I miss humans. They suck, they are complicated, they are a mess, but the truth is: it’s bad with them, worst without them. Even the mess, I miss.
I even miss people who were only in my life for a few short months. I miss hugging, touching, sitting with and talking to another human being until sunsets and sunrises.
These are crazy times, ones we are living in. Crazy enough that songs keep hitting differently every time we press play. Like this one, written in a pre-pandemic world, but reflecting on a world that might not live to see its tomorrow. It talks about an earthquake in the middle of a normal day in L.A., one that makes people think about the last face they’d want to see if the world was, indeed, ending.
I first heard this song in a very wet Fall in Germany almost two years ago, and I was in the middle of a rollercoaster ride of emotions. I had just met, dated and broken up with someone who left me with the most intense sense of unmatched abandonment, all within a few short weeks. I remember walking around the wet streets of Munich, playing this song on repeat for days, thinking about who I’d wanna go see if the world ended the next day.
One year later I found myself in the same situation, listening to the same damn song. It hit me almost exactly the same. Another Fall in Germany, leaves falling, pandemic rolling, and yet I was still stuck to that same question: who would I go see if the world was ending?
I think that’s why I always revisit this song every once in a while. That’s probably why, despite a busy evening of work, I clicked on that damn video and let it play again tonight. Because I wonder who would that person be, I still do.
But tonight, it made me think less of the world that “was ending” and more of the world post a very hard, long and intense pandemic. Who would I go see once all of this was over? Who would I take the first plane to whenever I could? I’d like to say that this answer was as simple as just closing my eyes and picturing someone in front of me, but it isn’t. I now have a long list of people, a long list of places. Yes, I might have a top three, but God, every single one of them I’m excited to see. Friends, more friends, even more friends. Old ones, new ones, near or far.
I guess this is a reminder to use the extra miles to buy that ticket you might not afford otherwise. A reminder to get in the car and drive the x many hours you need. A reminder to pick up the phone and apologize, or forgive, whoever that person on the other side of the line might be. A reminder that someone’s world ends every day and still we act like it will never happen for us.
I also remember that for a millisecond, both two years and one year ago, I had someone in mind when I listened to that song. A quick flicker of a face I had lost and that I rapidly brushed off my mind because it was “nearly impossible” that I would ever be able to go see him again. Even if the world was ending. The bridges had been long burned and buried and then burned again in every attempt I made to make things better between us.
Tonight, as the song played and I pictured so many people I wanna see soon, his face came back, and I smiled. I smiled because it’s been an overwhelming 7/8 months of figuring each other out, and healing the bridges that were long gone. A long road of forgiving, apologizing, learning, letting this be.
I smiled because the world isn’t ending, and I’m still very much stuck but the nearly impossible face of the past two years is now a face I’m about to see again in less than two weeks.
I smiled because even though things are hard now, seeing him gives me the hope I need to believe that even the most impossible of all things aren’t impossible at all.
And I hope that he is the first to many other faces I’d get to see very soon. Each of them making me feel lighter and better about life in general, about a pandemic life that has taken too much lately and given us shit.
All that to say, I just bought my first plane ticket in way too long (one that I can actually use and that won’t get cancelled for the 96404th time), one of MANY I’m looking forward to purchase and use in a future that isn’t that far away anymore.
I made my list. I’ll fly, drive, walk. I’ll get there. And if the world ends — or not — at least I’ll have no question that I saw, hugged, kissed and talked to everyone that has ever crossed my mind whenever I’ve played this song.
