Reclaiming the Songs I Couldn’t Listen To Anymore

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You know the feeling you get when you hear your favorite holiday or traditional music and it reminds you of quality time with your loved ones? Or those songs that you absolutely love and cherish deeply in your music library, but rarely listen to because they remind you of a bad time in your life? I get a feeling like this with every song I listen to.

When I listen to a song from a few years ago, I can remember what I was doing the moment I first listened, what I was going through at the time, and maybe even what I was wearing. I don’t just remember these things, I feel them. I can feel the high school drama, the relationship issues, and the struggles with self-image all in the three minutes and fifty-two seconds of a song I loved in 2017. 

My emotional connection to music is a blessing, don’t get me wrong. But, it would be simply inaccurate of me to not mention the curse that comes along with it. 

I have always been the type of music listener to get hooked on a specific song or set of songs and play it to death. You’ll never catch me with a playlist of over 40 songs that I actually listen to. I partially feel like this listening style led to my emotional connection with music. If you’re playing the same five songs on repeat for three weeks straight, certainly you’ll associate these songs with that three week period. 

I—like many others with immaculate music taste—loved SZA’s album CTRL. To this day, I still listen to the album like it just dropped on Spotify last week. I remember sitting in the car on the way to my annual summer camp counselor job, hearing each song for the first time. I recall the way I fell in love with every track. The song that especially caught my attention was “Garden (Say It Like Dat).” This song instantly became a personal favorite of mine, which meant I played it nonstop for a month straight.

After getting hooked on this song, I started to associate it with my old high school relationship. This was a good thing, as we were actually in a really good place at the time, which was somewhat rare in that relationship. I associated the song with being young and in love. After summer 2017, I always listened to this song and got filled with happiness when I felt the emotions rush in. This was great...until this boyfriend and I broke up. 

My beloved “Garden (Say It Like Dat)” was now tainted by teenage heartbreak. 

Eventually, the pain of this heartbreak faded away, along with my negative emotions tied to the song, but a teenage heartbreak, while traumatic in its own way, was nothing compared to what I had coming next. 

My first semester of college was incredibly hard for me, mentally. I had two albums that got me through the darkest time of my life, that I loved and listened to religiously. Just a few months later, these songs caused a physical anxiety reaction, reminding me of things I never wanted to think about again. Just the intro of some of these songs would make me be the start of an anxiety attack.

This feeling of losing songs I once had on a loop felt unfair. Long after healing and moving past this dark point in my life, I still felt uneasy hearing a snippet from them.

I would ask myself, “Why when I am the happiest I’ve ever been, do I feel so powerless when I hear these songs?”

At this happier, healthier period of growth in my life, I realized I needed to do something about this. I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines as trauma took away the things that I held dearly. But, this was no high school breakup, it was going to take a lot more than a couple of months of healing to reclaim these songs. 

I decided that I had to sit down and listen. I don’t believe in just forcing myself to do something that makes me uncomfortable, so I took it one song at a time, little by little. Every song that stirred up a certain emotion or memory within me would then be assigned a new, positive one. This method is actually an altered tip from my therapist when I have negative thoughts. Whenever the unnecessarily negative thought comes into my head, I replace it with a positive one. So, I implemented this into how I was going to reclaim my favorite songs. 

Because healing is not linear and these things take time, there are a few songs I have left unlistened. I plan to get around to these songs one day, or maybe I’ll allow some to be left with these old emotions. I hope one day when I’m older and have fully healed, these songs play at a cookout I want to be able to hear the songs and look back, proud of how far I have come.