I think Iām starting to figure out why Iām so reserved/ācoldā emotionally.
When I was a teenager, like 13-15, I was a HOPELESS romantic. I would write fully fledged, and ultimately fully produced and orchestrated songs for my crushes and create massive works of art across a variety of mediums that took months, sometimes years, to complete, at an age when most boys couldnāt be arsed to get a girl flowers unless their mothers or sisters prompted them, ESPECIALLY if that girl scared them shitless.
And I was intense about this art. If someone inspired a piece, theyād probably end up knowing. I was intense about EVERYTHING. I was often the teachersā favorite, I knew the answers to most questions, I HAD done the homework, I had an excellent memory, and I wasnāt afraid to kick anyoneās ass if and when it came time for trivia in almost any subject. I was a pompous dick about it, too 𤣠I was gonna win by a mile and I knew it. I wasnāt the type of person in high school that guys wanted to date. Be friends with, if they were daring, but not date.
The transition from hopeless romantic to cynic came at about age 16-17 after endless rejections and being told to tone myself down over and over. I began to hate my happy, romantic side. After one final diplomatic rejection from the guy I had written āMy Islandā about and being told to tone myself down one final time, I marched into my long term hairstylistās office as soon as she was free and told her to cut all my damn hair off and give me the pixie cut Iād desperately wanted since my headmate Castor had cut our hair short like that when he was 10. I buried the rest of my sentimentality with that haircut, too, and started playing my cards close to my chest.
I still wrote huge things for my crushes, but that, too, stopped after I wrote my album The Places We Come Home To in 2018 for my first husband when I was 20.
I hated it so viscerally that it took two years to release a proper follow-up to it, Light on the Final Day, and I had written that record a few months BEFORE most of Places ever occurred to me.
It would take nearly three years after that for us to release any kind of proper follow-up to Light on the Final Day, something broke in me so badly. And it wasnāt even really me that wrote any of it, Metacognition (2023) is Eightās masterpiece.
And for someone used to writing and recording several records a YEAR, this devastated me.
Itās taken being in several lovely partnerships to get me to uncover a FRACTION of that sentimentality. I still really canāt write happy things without cringing or feeling sick, but Iām getting there. Iām immensely grateful for their patience while I unfuck myself.
-AllÄna
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