Second up; HOME.... 😮💨 Oof. Strap in.
This fucker. This song is the reason I couldn't listen to that album again for a good week or more. This was the gut punch that had me sobbing.
"Crying, alone on the ride home. Driving, just got the text you died. This doesn't feel real to me."
If you missed that one line in the intro, you could easily mistake this for a breakup song.
Musically, straight away it made my defenses slam up as that intro is very similar to another song I know that triggers a trauma response in me, so it was already off to losing start to be fair 😅 the ukulele strumming pattern is very similar to a song by a Faroese singer.
And the way he uses a lot of Cry tone in his voice and breaking words up into staccato syllables is heavily reminiscent of the Chasing demo which also makes me cry. So there's that.
But the lyrics. Fuck me...
I am very lucky, a privilege I don't necessarily recognise on a day to day basis, but most of the relationships I've been in, I've stayed (or later reconciliated with, and become) good friends (again) with most of my ex's. There are two notable exceptions to this rule. One broke my heart in the cruelest way imaginable. He's reached out a couple of times since, and I've rebuffed every attempt. I think he's got the hint now. I have no need for contact with him. The other? He had to leave for his own mental health and peace. I was a reminder of a life he needed to leave behind. Necessity more than choice.
The former, I could look up and if I was so inclined I could find out how he's doing. I have no desire to, but I could.
The latter, I have no contact with at all. Other than his name and an address - if he's even still there - I have nothing and no way of knowing if he's okay. No social media. No links with his friends or family. He's not even on the same continent so it's not like I could just rock up and say hey? And on one hand, I fully acknowledge that I have no business doing so. We said goodbye, and he closed that door, and that is his privacy which he is fully entitled to. I am owed nothing there.
But it hurts me deep that I'll never know if he's still alive or not. He was always saying he'd never live to his 40th birthday. I hope he finds something to live for before then. But as I say, that privilege of mine that I still know (most of) the people who have meant the most to me and loved the hardest is always brought into stark contrast by his absence. For most people it's normal to never see or hear from an ex again. Mine are still very much in my life for the large part.
This song, for me, just shines a glaring spotlight on that absence. A vacant Him shaped hole where my friend used to be. It doesn't help that he's the one who introduced me to NF too. He'll always be intrinsically linked.
The phone numbers I had are all long disconnected. The chats defunct and abandoned. I could leave a voicemail that would never be picked up. I could text, it wouldn't even deliver.
"I'll just act like you're here; call your phone up, leave a voicemail and then text you, to call me back later, it's fine. No need to rush, it's alright."
Living in painful, forced ignorance. Doesn't really work, does it? In the back of your mind, you know it's not real.
I wonder who Nate lost? Presumably the friend flippantly alluded to in FEAR. They got a whole song 🩷😭
I'll continue to try and believe that He found a new place to call Home too... 🙏🏻
I'll do the rest of the EP another day. Crying again now.
