fall out boy lyrics that make me think of the places i grew up
this town is wasted and alone -- death valley -- when i visit, if I'm lucky i get to drive around, and the nothingness is crushing. You go to school, you graduate, if you're upper or middle class you go to college, probably the local one an hour away. You have to drive an hour to get to the good grocery store, twenty minutes to the shitty one. You marry your high school sweetheart, or someone you met in college, you settle down and have kids. You have at least one family member who works for a company you're pretty sure is still just a factory, even though they have fancier names for it now. I look out the window of my parents' house and i can barely see the neighbors' house.
you were the last good thing about this part of town -- grand theft autumn/where is your boy -- i left my best friend in the city i moved from and god i miss her so fucking much. Every time i visit it's like we were never apart. Every time i leave we both wonder if we'd have made it had i not moved away.
i can't remember the good old days -- 27 -- your parents' house is supposed to feel like being a kid, running around carefree. I have not lived with my parents for eight years but every time i visit i wake up with that same chest crushing anxiety and it does not go away. Even when i get back out east it takes me days to feel like a person again.
every pane of glass that your pebbles tap/negates the pains I went through to avoid you/and every little pat on the shoulder for attention/fails to mention I still hate you -- chicago is so two years ago -- i did not visit for almost two years, and then only did so because my grandmother was dying. Had she not been, it would have likely been so much longer. I spent those two years hating that small town, because i thought if i hated it i wouldn't miss it, and it all hurt so much that it wasn't hard to try to hate it. (that didn't work, because even though it hurt, it was still home)
I know I should be home/all the colors of the street signs, they remind me of the/pickup truck out in front of your neighbor's house -- chicago is so two years ago -- it's the little things that get me, the parts that weren't so bad, the parts that were even good, the parts that killed me to leave behind. The first dance class i took out east i sobbed the entire two mile walk home.
whoa, can't do it by myself -- reinventing the wheel to run myself over -- this one gets me because every time everything just feels like too much, it's amplified by the fact that i did this to myself, i chose to move away from everyone and everything i ever knew, and it's therefore my responsibility to indeed, do it by myself
we're the kids who feel like dead ends//and the poets are just kids who didn't make it -- i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth (summer song) -- literally all of my friends from home don't quite fit the midwestern mold, and we're all mentally ill creative types. We're in our mid twenties now and have felt like burn outs for years
I swear I'd burn this city down to show you the light -- sophomore slump or comeback of the year -- the same best friend from earlier. I worry the small town is crushing her and she's so, so bright.
the best way to make it through with hearts and wrists intact is to realize two out of three ain't bad -- i'm like a lawyer with the way i'm always trying to get you off (me & you) -- you make sacrifices to survive. Mental, emotional, physical, everyone's sacrificing something just to make it through.
it's all a game of this or that, now versus then/better off against worse for wear/and you're someone who knows someone who knows someone/I once knew, and I just want to be a part of this -- hum hallelujah -- the duality of living in such a small town where everyone knows everyone and still feeling like you have no place to belong
literally all of g.i.n.a.s.f.s. but especially: everybody wants to drive on through the night if it's a drive back home//things aren't the same anymore, some nights, they get so bad//i sleep with your old shirts and walk through this house//it's a strange way of saying that I know I'm supposed to love you, I'm supposed to love you//I've already given up on myself twice third time is the charm//threw caution to the wind, but I've got a lousy arm -- ioh was my first fob cd, and i listened to it on repeat the summer i spent commuting from my parents house to the hospital in the city to camp until i finally got an apartment. This was also the year i spent coming out to myself, terrified of the future and expectations i knew I'd never meet. I was also in love with one of my best friends and god it hurts so much for your first love to feel so wrong
I will never end up like him/behind my back, I already am -- headfirst slide into cooperstown on a bad bet -- when i first moved to the east coast i swore I'd assimilate and no one would know where i came from, but the second I'd open my mouth it would be "oh what part of the midwest are you from?" Over time I've learned to make peace with the parts of myself that are so unavoidably rural and midwestern, but there were parts i resented for a long time, because it felt like I'd never be free from where i grew up
I don't know where I'm going/but I don't think I'm coming home -- alone together -- i remember driving home from a college course i was taking my senior year of high school and just, dreaming of driving on, starting somewhere new
and in the end/i'll do it all again -- the kids aren't alright -- if things had been different, if i'd grown up differently, i wouldn't be who i am today. Also i almost got these lyrics tattooed on my thigh. Still might tbh
you were the sunshine of my lifetime/what would you trade the pain for?//and I just about snapped, don't look back//what would you trade the pain for? I'm not sure -- love from the other side -- leaving was, and is, so goddamn hard. Every time i visit my best friend, my grandparents, i have to remind myself why i left, and why i can't go back, and so much of that focuses on looking forward because if i look at the past too much i begin to romanticize the pain
scar crossed lovers, forever -- heaven, iowa -- i am so inexplicably, irreversibly bound to the people i grew up with like some sort of fucked up trauma bonding. Out here on the east coast, in the cities, it's just different. Even people who grew up east coast "rural," it's not the same. It's strong with friends from the city i moved from and even stronger with my friend who grew up in the same county.
