Ninth Circle Nostalgia
It’s funny how a song can hit you like a flashback instead of a fantasy.
Other people hear this and think it’s exaggerated. I hear it and remember whole years of my life; strip clubs, bad apartments, cheap liquor, cheap men, and choices that weren’t really choices when survival was the only plan I had.
It wasn’t one wild night. It was a whole era. A loop I lived in until I was 23 because poverty doesn’t let you grow, it keeps you spinning.
And somehow this stupid, chaotic, ratchet little song nails the energy of that version of me better than anything I could write.
Not because I miss it. Not because I want it back. Just because it’s strange to have a soundtrack for a life I survived by instinct and left by evolution.
I’m listening now like I’m watching footage of a girl I used to know, one I’m proud of, one I don’t want to be again, one who kept me alive long enough to become someone else.
The ninth circle isn’t home anymore. But damn… I remember the heat.
