I remember listening to Lorde’s song “Supercut” on loop while walking alone through Dubrovnik’s Stari Grad in 2017, on my family’s last full day in Croatia. It was the European summer after my European breakup — a summer I expected to be elsewhere, living a different life. A summer I expected to spend with my lover, bathing in sound, sweat, and strobe lights within the concrete walls of Berlin’s nightclubs; not bathing in the salt of the Adriatic, basking in sunshine, listening to pop music, by myself.

At that point in time, I’d gone fully no contact with the boy who should have stayed the previous summer’s summer fling instead of becoming my boyfriend. We’d made the mistake of trying to make it work across oceans, thinking our fledgling connection was so strong and so special that it could make the distance, just to discover half a year later that our magic was limited — only capable of existing in the same space, in the same time.

In hindsight, it was laughably naïve, almost sweet. There is something to be said about really falling head over heels in love for the first time in your life. At least it was for me.

Before him, I’d spent significant chunks of my previous relationships trying to come up with exit strategies from said relationships because I was too much of a coward to just end them. And then I spent the subsequent situationships trying to figure out who I was as a finally single woman in her mid-twenties who never learned to date, while also trying to navigate this new, significantly more adult world of men. Different values, different rules, different expectations — all of which I had to learn as I stumbled ahead.

Being truly heartbroken for the first time, by someone I loved who I knew loved me, was a painful experience. But I could never regret it — in the end, in a roundabout way, it showed me what real love should be. But that’s a story for another time.

I ended up listening to “Supercut” again today on a whim. I can’t remember the last time I did, actually, but I know for sure I’ve danced around my bedroom to it multiple times since 2017. It’s such a gorgeous song. Danceable heartbreak has always been my favourite genre of pop music. In recent years I’ve listened predominantly to music without lyrics — the kind of music you lose yourself to on the dance floor; it can’t be helped when you kind of throw raves for a living — but there will always be so much power in pop. Truly great pop music has the ability to touch you in the deepest, most vulnerable, most honest places of your heart. Truly great pop music always stays with you.

‘Cause my head (In my head I do everything right)
When you call (When you call, I’ll forgive and not fight)
Because ours are the moments I play in the dark
We were wild and fluorescent
Come home to my heart

In 2017 I fought and didn’t forgive because I knew that was the right choice for me. I forgave eventually, only when it finally felt right, quietly and to myself, which is the forgiveness that matters most. But “Supercut” was such a moment in time for me. When I listen to it, I feel those feelings again. Heartbreak, yes. Resignation. And also, oddly, hope. I remember that I walked to the old town with a smile on my face and a spring in my step despite my broken heart. I knew then that I would heal, because I could feel myself already on the way.

It’s actually so wonderful now to be able to dip back into what those years felt like through the music I was listening to then, knowing I’m anchored in present day in such absolute contentment and stability. What I have now is a life that would have been impossible if I never got my heart broken, and a love I would not have been capable of today if yesterday had never taught me its lessons. Blasting “Supercut” through my living room now, I’m like a tourist in the emotions I used to inhabit, visiting my younger, more tumultuous, twenty-something self with the lived experience of a steadier woman inching ever closer to 40; one who has skipped a few chapters ahead and already knows that the story gets so much better.

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How strange, to have a song be the thing that finally makes me break out of my writer’s block after so many years.

I know I’ve always had it in me, waiting — it’s not like you ever forget how to string a bunch of words together. I think I’ve just been trying to figure out what it is I really want to write. I know I don’t want to write for publications anymore; I don’t want to write about beauty, or lifestyle, or all the things that other people do so much better, and with so much more passion. I don’t have the heart for it.

The heart I have is mine. My best writing is always going to be the deeply personal. It’s feelings. Completely useless to anyone else but to myself, and that’s okay. It is what it is. I’ve always done this for me. But it’s a little tricky to navigate that when I’ve shared my life for almost four years now with someone who is the polar opposite of me — doesn’t do words, isn’t good at vulnerability, probably finds this all a little cringe if we’re being honest. So I don’t think about just me anymore; I think about him, too. I think that’s why I’ve grown more and more quiet on the Internet over the years compared to when I would pour every feeling out into the aether. Those of us who grew up on LiveJournal, then Tumblr, will always know what that reflex feels like, though — to just release. Kids today don’t do that anymore. Maybe they’re the smarter ones.

But I can’t tell you how nice it has been to hear my fingers on my keyboard again, having all of this come out in one big, unedited rush. It’s been like breathing.

We’ll figure it out.