Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
To: DeadStrings
Subject: Exes and other calamities
Serious question. Have you ever had to face your ex?
The one who fucked you six ways to Sunday and not in the good way.
The one who took parts of you that you didn’t realize were missing until they left with them, and you could barely function.
Then one day, suddenly, you find out you have to see them again.
Maybe at a wedding. Maybe at a mutual friend’s emergency. Maybe because of some cosmic joke.
What are the five songs you’d play to mentally get ready to walk into that room like you’re untouchable?
DeadStrings: Here you are. I thought you disappeared after you realized I dance to Sylvester.
The question is: Have I faced my ex? Nope.
It’s scary and exhilarating to even think about seeing her again.
Yeah, I think it terrifies me the most. I guess we all have that one person we’re afraid to see.
The emotional poltergeist. The walking unresolved chord progression.
The one who turns your spine to glass and your voice to static when you hear their name.
If I had to face her again?
These are the five songs I’d armor up with while buttoning a shirt I suddenly hate and pretending I haven’t drafted twelve imaginary conversations in my head.
DeadStrings’ Top Five: “Emotional Landmines in Minor Key”
“I Want You” —Elvis Costello
This song is poison on vinyl. It’s obsessive, messy, desperate in lowercase.
Exactly what I’d never say out loud, but absolutely what I’d feel the moment I saw her laugh at someone else’s joke.
“Everybody Knows” —Leonard Cohen
Because spite is a cologne. And this one smells like cheap aftershave and moral decay.
Everybody knows she broke me. And I’m pretending it was mutual.
“Mama You Been on My Mind” —Bob Dylan
Not the pleading version. The detached one. The version that says, “You’re still there, but you don’t own me anymore.”
“Stripped” —Depeche Mode
Cold, controlled, seductive.
I don’t want anything soft when I see her again. I want this—industrial ache wrapped in leather and silence. This one’s for walking into the room like I didn’t just spend the last few years trying not to write her name into every damn song I hear.
“Pictures of You” —The Cure
Because I still have her in my mind sometimes. Not the real her. The one I imagined—the one I talk to when I’m hurting or missing or . . . this feeling cloys just enough to keep me from falling for the memory again.
Yeah, that’s the playlist. I wouldn’t survive it gracefully, but I’d survive it loud.
Your turn. Or are you going to pretend you’re emotionally evolved and just keep playing Tori Amos on repeat like a respectable ghost?
StringTheory27: Wow . . . Okay.
So let me get this straight. You’re about to stare down the human equivalent of a Molotov cocktail thrown at your heart, and you’re walking in armed with Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen?
Is your plan to confuse her into guilt with abstract lyricism and unresolved male pain?
Let’s break this down:
“I Want You” —Elvis Costello
Okay, sure. If you want to show up already emotionally unhinged. This isn’t armor. This is bleeding all over the pavement while whispering “I still want you” into your whiskey.
You’re basically handing her the match and begging her to strike it.
“Everybody Knows” —Leonard Cohen
This one’s just smug, and I say that with love. It’s a slow clap wrapped in sarcasm. It’s you pretending you’ve made peace when you’re actually still pissed she didn’t fall apart without you.
Which, to be fair, is kind of a mood.
“Stripped” —Depeche Mode
Somehow, I knew you were going to pull this one. It’s calculated. Mechanical. Dangerous in a cold, shirt-half-buttoned way. This is the track you put on when you want her to wonder who you’re sleeping with now—but the joke is, you’re still sleeping alone. Just under better lighting.
“Mama You Been on My Mind” —Bob Dylan
Stop it. This one is a trap. You act like it’s detached, but it’s drenched in wistful almosts.
You want her to think you’ve moved on, but you picked the version that still aches in the silence between verses.
“Pictures of You” —The Cure
This is where I roll my eyes. Not because it’s not valid—it is. Painfully. But because you still don’t know if you’re grieving her or the version of her you made up just to have something to lose. Also, this only works if you’re looking out a rain-streaked window in slow motion.
Your playlist is fifty percent damage control, thirty percent denial, and twenty percent unresolved longing in a trench coat. And somehow it still works. Infuriating.
DeadStrings: First of all, damage control? You think I built that list to soften the blow?
You think “Stripped” is about pretending I’ve moved on? It’s not a signal flare. It’s a warning label.
That song doesn’t say “look what you lost.” It says, “You wouldn’t survive me now, because I’m a dead man walking.”
And don’t even start with that Dylan line.
Yes, it’s wistful.
Yes, it’s quiet.
That’s obviously intentional. Not every punch lands with a scream. Some only leave bruises where no one can see them.
Also, you mocking “Pictures of You” like you haven’t built at least three major life decisions around Tori Amos lyrics is a little rich, don’t you think?
And you know what? Maybe I am grieving a version of her that never existed. That doesn’t make the loss any less real. If anything, it makes it worse.
So, no—My playlist isn’t about denial. It’s about truth. The truth that doesn’t need to raise its voice to ruin you.
But thanks for the dissection.
Truly. I appreciate you handing me my ass. Let me know when you’re ready to hand over your five-part emotional autopsy.
I’ll have my scalpel ready.
StringTheory27: Fine, I’m ready for you to dissect me.
“Where the Wild Roses Grow” —Nick Cave sometimes the hands holding the flowers are also the ones pushing you under. And because no one believes the soft ones can bleed this much.
“Rid of Me” —PJ Harvey
He’s not ready for the version of me that no longer aches to be adored. This isn’t a song—it’s a warning. I want him to feel it pulsing in the space between us, vibrating with everything I’m no longer willing to say out loud.
“Little Earthquakes” —Tori Amos
This is what it sounded like inside my body after he left. Because some of us don’t scream—we detonate quietly, then sit with the rubble.
“Fast Car” —Tracy Chapman
Because I thought I could save us both with belief and momentum. Turns out I was just the engine. He never planned to stay in the car.
“Strange Weather” —Marianne Faithfull
This plays in the version of the confrontation where I don’t speak. Where I just look at him, once. And he hears the wind shift.
“Wuthering Heights” —Kate Bush
I want him to ache like I did, and because sometimes I still want to show up looking like a curse in lipstick and silk and whisper, “I never left. You fucking did.”
You broke us, asshole.
So there, six tracks. No forgiveness. No permission. No edits.
Just the playlist I hum while I decide whether or not to look at him when I walk in.
Now go ahead and critique me as if it doesn’t undo a little of you. However, don’t you dare come for Tori Amos.
I see you forming the sentence. I hear the eye roll from here.
Let me be very clear:
“Little Earthquakes” isn’t just a song. It’s a post-modern soliloquy. It’s what it feels like when someone doesn’t break your heart—they uproot it before stomping on it again and again.
It’s blood and piano keys, and that moment you laugh too hard just so you won’t cry in front of him.
You don’t put on Tori to feel better; you put her on because she already knows. She’s been inside the part of you that flinches when someone asks if you’re okay, and instead of fixing it, she writes a sonata around it and dares you to sing along.
So, if you’re about to say something like “She’s a bit much,” go ahead. I’ll just assume you’ve never actually been gutted properly.
Now, go ahead and say something snarky about Kate Bush too, and just get it over with. I’ll be over here, holding my emotional restraint together with eyeliner and sarcasm. No lipstick tonight.
DeadStrings: Kate Bush, huh?
You just had to go full gothic banshee with a wind machine. Of course you did.
You seem to turn your pain into a spectacle—red lips, haunted piano, whispering something about ghosts and metaphors no one else can quite understand.
“Wuthering Heights” . . . It’s so you.
You know, I used to make fun of “Running Up That Hill.” I said it was overdramatic. Said it was weird. Said I didn’t get it. If I could, I would borrow that song and change the arrangements. More piano, slow it down—make it hurt. It’d be epic.
The point is that I understand the lyrics now too well.
Because when you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you the same way—who can’t, or won’t, or maybe just won’t admit it—that song feels like truth turned to static.
Can you really make a deal with God? It’s bold to ask a superior being to swap places.
You know what? I’d do it. Not sure if I want the haunting music as the background, but I would fucking do it.
After all this time, I’d still trade everything—my name, my history, the music, even this bitter little grudge I carry around like it’s the thing that makes my heart beat. I would do it just to feel what she felt. Just once.
Not because I want her back, but because I need to understand why she couldn’t listen to me. Sure, I fucked up, but . . . there’s an entire explanation that led to that moment. I want to know why she couldn’t listen. Why couldn’t we even say goodbye?
When I hear that song playing, I usually flinch. Not at the song, but at the deal I’d still take.
StringTheory27: I don’t even know what to say to that. Except maybe . . . yeah.
That’s it.
That’s the wound we never stop carrying around.
We avoid it, we blame it, we hate it . . . but ultimately, it’s always just this—“I need to understand why I wasn’t enough.”
Sometimes, we don’t get the answer.
We just get the pain attached to the unresolved issues and the absence of therapy, which we fill with music. Music keeps us from disappearing into it.
Breakups aren’t neat. They don’t end when someone walks away. They fall apart in pieces—one playlist, one photo, one rewound message at a time.
You don’t just mourn the person. You mourn the version of yourself that believed it was going to work. The version that believed love was enough—it was forever.
It’s not.
But sometimes a song is.
Sometimes, music is the only thing that keeps your rib cage up when grief makes your spine forget how.
So, yeah.
Maybe I am a gothic banshee with a wind machine, but don’t pretend you don’t hear the same storm howling in your own chest.
DeadStrings: I hope you don’t have to see him again.
Not because you can’t handle it—you could turn that kind of pain into poetry and set the room ablaze with it. But because you shouldn’t have to.
You’ve already carried more than your share.
And honestly, some ghosts don’t deserve a second haunting.
StringTheory27: You say some ghosts don’t deserve a second haunting.
But what if we’re the ghosts?
What if we’re just two barely-exorcised heartbreaks clinging to a faulty connection and nostalgia, pretending this doesn’t already mean something?
Sorry. That got dramatic.
I blame all the Kate Bush.
But . . . if we are ghosts? At least we’re haunting each other with a hell of a soundtrack.
Now go ahead, make fun of me again before I admit anything real.