My First Psychological Lash Was Embraced by the Collateral Beauty of a Lyric

How my first love left me for my best friend

‘And love is not the easy thing/ The only baggage that you can bring…’ was playing in that garage where the only tenuous light illuminated the clinging couples. On the rhythm of slow movements, their lips danced between the excitement of the first kiss and the exploration of new sensations.

It was the crazy ’90s. The garage parties made us sick to our stomachs because it could be that night. The night of the first kiss. The night of the first love.

‘Is all that you can’t leave behind,’ was the last chorus’ song of that music court. The vocal was so intense, just like my expectation to find the passion of my life.

She was the perfect girl, who rummaged in the depths of my heart like someone who plays rope skipping freely on the street with her friends.

My heart almost jumped out of my mouth as I approached the garage.

At a fraction of a second, I forgot to listen to the vocalist; such was the mind drift. But he continued, ‘And if the darkness is to keep us apart,’ as a warning that things aren’t as simple as your ingenuity want it to be.

Some of my 16-year-old friends were outside, but one of them told me she was in the garage. His expression was somehow awkward. But I was so anesthetized, already imagining the perfect lips of her mouth touching mine for the first time. So, I did not even notice my friend’s committed expression, nor of the vocalist, who continued, ‘And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off.’

As my legs trouble through that stairs, I went into the darkness of a cozy and intimate party. I couldn’t distinguish anyone, but I knew that most boys in that room were kissing a girl.

I took a deep breath, and the song softly made sense again. The vocalist ended the second chorus by saying, ‘And if your glass heart should crack/And for a second, you turn back/Oh no, be strong.’

How could I be so naïve? The vocalist was warning me, and I couldn’t understand. I was only 16, and I was utterly in love with that girl. But at that moment, she appeared in front of my eyes, kissing my best friend.

I was never in that position before. She didn’t know I loved her — neither my best friend. So, seconds after my best friend saw me, they came together in my direction. They were very excited, giving me the news they were in love with each other.

I don’t remember my expression. But to not look threatening, I must have pretended an extreme joy; simultaneously, I felt my heart being penetrated by a surgical knife.

‘You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been/A place that has to be believed to be seen.’ How could the vocalist know what I was feeling? She and my best friend returned to that special place on the dance floor, where I dreamed of being with my loved one. And now, I turned back outside, where my other friend that tried to warn me was, and let myself be cuddled by his harsh and straightforward words:

Let it be. It happens to the best.

I was feeling myself in a cage. Surrounded by my pain with a new feeling I’ve never felt before. I only remember the vocalist’s wise advice, who said to me, ‘You could have flown away/A singing bird in an open cage/Who will only fly, only fly for freedom.’

I was a proud and stubborn young kid. So I stayed there until the end of the song. She went up and came to us. The eyes screamed with happiness. She was feeling the same naïve pleasure I wanted to feel.

At that moment, she looked at me and realized that I was not okay. As any moron would have done, I said I had eaten something spoiled at dinner.

Idiot. I should have said in front of everyone that I loved her. But why the hell would I do that after losing her to my best friend, if I didn’t dare to do it in the many hours we shared as friends? ‘You are a weak idiot,’ I thought to myself.

Yet, that vocalist continued to whisper in my ear, ‘Walk on, walk on/What you’ve got they can’t deny it/Can’t sell it, or buy it/Walk on, walk on/Stay safe tonight.’

At that moment, I realized what fiber I am made of. I gave my muse a big hug and left home. I assumed the defeat, swallowed my pride, and went home. I knew that whatever more I could say that night, it would not revert to anything, nor the pain I already felt.

So I took the pain, accepted the vocalist’s advice, and walked on.

Behind Every Favorite Song, There Is an Untold Story

I spend my life listening to what vocalists had to say to me.

They always knew what was happening to us. Like gods of poetry, dancing around us all the time. Speaking to our ears, as elves of kindness, who warn us about what life holds.

In a kind of leaf dance in the magical forest, skipping among songs wrapped in tree branches, songs let us float along the winding paths of an enchanted forest.

The elves singing ‘When you try your best, but you don’t succeed,’ they’re enchanting us with our uniqueness.

They are the guardians of the future that awaits us. In letters and words, as in the leaves and branches of the forest, Mother Nature’s teachings are written. When Nature secrets us ‘When you get what you want but not what you need’ she’s not trying to harm you. She’s just trying to understand if you are awake to life — sharp like a hawk’s restlessness or the resilience of a tree.

Songs test us with refined choruses finishing with ‘Lights will guide you home/And ignite your bones/And I will try to fix you.’

So don’t feel alone. The elves, like the song, are always right behind you, guiding your soul to warm and kind places.

Final Thought

If your soul is invaded by the beauty of a lyric or a poem, you’ll be able to live in a magical world.

As a magical tough gave by the most tender fairy, covering you with the ability to see and hear what others cannot. Leaving yourself sensitive to contemplation or eternal love.

Even in the saddest moments, when at 16 years old you are exchanged for your best friend, you can see the light.

Being blessed by the sensitivity of the vocalists’ message is a gift.

It makes you irreverently observant. It makes you stubbornly sensitive. It makes you see the beauty in the saddest places.

That voice comes again in the final words of another article. And ‘I drift in the forest/I swirl like the snow in the night air/By the weight of the earth, I’m tangled and hurled/I drift like a branch does in the wind.’

Sometimes words get you drunk. There is so much beauty in the world that it’s sometimes moving. Letters do not set us free. They hold us to the trunks of trees, stuck in time, tied to the memories of what we lived.

Lyrics whisper in our ears as someone takes the rug out from under our feet, leaving us vulnerable. But always warning that life is a sigh of uncertainty. Like someone who waits ’For something secretly may dwell in the darkness unknown/And so shrewdly move and even make its home/Or it may feign its embrace and feel kind and warm/When it has silently gone or was never there at all.’

My sweet first love sometimes appears in my dreams, dressed in sand and rags of wind.

In a soft voice, the vocalist explains that life is made up of victories and defeats.

And so he leaves, the voice with the guitar under his arm. He disappears in the forest's fog to later return, whispering in my ear.

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