All I Ever Wanted Was All That You Are

Find this essay in more in: Someone Said This?! Vol. 1 No. 3: All I Do Is Try Try Try

Great lyrics stay with me. They fuel my endless pursuit to write one great sentence. Who knows. On a long enough timeline, it’s not impossible that I could write a verse like:

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning, And the seasons knew exactly when to change

Just as kindness knows no shame, know through all your joy and shame, that I’ll be loving you always.

It’s not probable. It’s just also not impossible.

Great vocals, on the other hand, exist in another world. There’s no timeline in which I hit a single note that Whitney Houston ever sang, and that makes her something else entirely in my mind. She’s winning a race I can’t figure out, much less compete in, so I’m happy to watch from the stands, amazed.

When a great vocal performance carries incredible lyrics, like when Hayley Williams sang:

I could follow you to the beginning, just to relive the start

And maybe then we’ll remember to slow down, at all of our favorite parts.

All I wanted was you. All I wanted was you

I just feel angry.

I also feel so lucky to be able to live in a time that I can hear it literally whenever I want to. Which is at least once a week. Because here’s the thing. You’re not supposed to be able to do both at that level. The pressure to remain that talented is too much for one person to handle.

And maybe Hayley would argue that she can’t maintain that because “All I Wanted” is the only song that Paramore has never performed live. She admitted that she did try to sing it during one of the band’s Parahoy concerts. But at the last minute, she decided she couldn’t hit the note well enough and pulled the song from the setlist.

The lore of the song is bigger than the note at this point. The expectations grow with each performance. And try as she might, she doesn’t feel like she can deliver on a version of herself she revealed years ago.

You can see the way that wears on a person in a video from 2020. A Paramore fan acts out a skit where the fan’s friend is dying. The doctor tells the fan they’ve tried everything, but his friend isn’t going to make it. The fan asks if he can try one last thing, and pulls out his phone. It’s at this point, as a viewer, you notice that “All I Wanted” is playing in the background. And if you’re a Paramore fan, you know that the big note is coming. It works as a simple joke, but it’s perfect if you’re in on the joke.

Hayley reacted to the video a couple of years ago. She’s unsuspecting for the first few lines of the skit, but then, right on cue, she rolls her eyes the second she understands that the power of her voice in All I Wanted will save the dying teen. It’s a funny response for the most part, but there is genuine irritation, too. Because, to us, that note represents her brilliance—her ability to scream out vulnerability with such power that you might mistake it for anger.

To her, it’s a level of effort or accomplishment that she cannot find her way back to. A single line in a single song that proves no matter what you do, you can always disappoint someone—even yourself.

I think about that difference a lot.

Achievement, especially after any amount of effort, should be the ultimate reward. If you don’t have a thing to accomplish, what is all the trying for? But what Hayley exposes in that video, or at least what I’m projecting onto her, is that achievement can feel just as bad as failing.

Reaching your goals proves that what you imagined is possible, but not always. You can have what you want, but you probably can’t keep it. What could be more heartbreaking?

Keeping yourself a secret from everyone turns into an inescapable hell. But showing people what you can do just gives them the tools to keep you trapped in a moment forever. And it’s a wonder any of us do either.

All of this is probably too deep of an analysis for a silly joke that exists mostly inside a fandom. But it’s worth acknowledging that trying can be excruciating. And it only begets more trying. The cycle is defeating, exhausting, and terrifying.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope we can all give ourselves the grace to know that once is enough. And patience when we aren’t ready to try just yet. And the wisdom to know that when you don’t have the energy to try again, that’s ok.

None of us need you to try all the time. All I ever want is you.

Don’t Close Your Eyes

Find this essay and more in Someone Said This?! Vol. 1 No. 2: I’m So Done With That

No human in history is more reckless with their feelings than Keith Whitley. Not only did he record “Don’t Close Your Eyes” but he released it as a single. He signed up to perform it to people, face to face??

If you’re unfamiliar, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” is a 4-minute and 12-second plea to Keith’s partner. He asks, for 4 entire minutes, that they not close their eyes to imagine their ex during sex.

I wish I was making this up.

At the height of the chorus, Keith begs, “Darling, just once, let yesterday go.” JUST. ONCE. He doesn’t even feel confident enough to ask for that to be the standard. He’s only asking about right now.

Yikes.

On its own, this would be a lot. But the fact that someone felt it strongly enough to make the feeling a song is unfathomable. But, no one saw it as embarrassing. People loved the song. I love the song. Billboard named it the #1 country song of 1988.

That’s the magic of saying the honest thing when every instinct says shut up. You allow others to respond. They can say, “Yes! That’s what I’ve been feeling but didn’t have language for.”

I’ve never begged someone to open their eyes. But I have silently willed someone to love me. It’s a unique kind of suffering, when you fear saying the wrong thing. You build a cage and force yourself to bear it alone, terrified of the quiet that might follow the truth.

But truth in a song opens the cage. When you sing the truth with other people, it becomes air—undeniable and delicate enough to reach in to the most fearful.

There is no better feeling than the moment in a dark venue when a quiet confession transforms into a hymn for everyone. By definition a confession always has one witness. Someone hears what you thought you’d never say. But that person doesn’t always feel obligated to acknowledge your voice.

But in a live show everyone chose it. They opted in to the responsibility of letting Keith, and everyone like him, know we heard it. And we’re here to stand amongst strangers and recognize the most secret parts of us. In front of each other. And the singer. And ourselves.

I don’t know any secrets to life. But I do know I’ve never once felt worse after showing up. I’ve always liked myself a little bit more after looking someone’s pain in the eye. And I’ve never once regretted standing in a room, singing the words to my favorite songs, knowing, in my bones, everyone there already believes the things I can’t yet say.

Who’s to Say? I Might Have Changed It All

Find this essay and more in Someone Said This?! Vol. 1 No. 1: If My Wishes Came True

On the other side of this heartbreak, if you’re lucky, will be a particular kind of sadness. It will be lighter than the unbearable weight of each piece of the broken heart you’re carrying now. It won’t feel impossible to carry anymore, but it will make your shoulders burn. You’ll probably find mysterious bruises all over your body, where the corners of the sadness bumped into you as you tried to navigate a new world. But, on days when you’re in familiar spaces, you’ll hardly notice the pain.

Every place you go after the heartbreak will feel brand new.

I don’t mean to make it sound hopeless. This sadness is beautiful. And not just in the way that anything can be beautiful after the darkness required to reassemble a heart. It’s beautiful just because it is.

So beautiful, in fact, it’s in all the best parts of some of the best love songs.

Dolly Parton promised it in “I Will Always Love You.”

Ronnie Milsap declared it in “I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World.”

Taylor Swift confessed it in “I Almost Do.”

And, of course, Garth Brooks moved all of us with it in “The Dance.”

The ugly truth is no one can teach you how to get through your first big heartbreak. Each of us feels it at some point, and still, it evades explanation or instruction. The best any of us can do is bear witness for each other. Acknowledge that the pain is real, even if there’s nowhere to dress the wound.

But I can make one promise. If you do it right, you can be one of the ones who transforms the pain into The Beautiful Sadness.

One important step is to try not replace the pieces they broke. You have to leave the cracks in your heart wide open. You can’t fill them in with glass or gold, not even lace. The sore parts have to stay exposed, as an acknowledgement that you desperately wanted life to go a different way. And even if life didn’t listen, and even though that might be for the best, you can’t deny that the current life you’re living isn’t always what you wanted. There’s another life where things worked out differently, and you’re happy there too.

But don’t get stuck in the yearning. You can’t reach the lucky side of heartbreak without fully accepting your loss. The Beautiful Sadness is a celebration of what else could have been.

At some point, the central villain in your current heartbreak will b e reimagined as a side character. One who simply matter more in a different storyline than they matter here. But they will never not matter. Any story about you could never be told honestly without the best parts they helped create.

The last step is to find a way to bring them with you into the new chapters of your life. Sit them in the corners of all the spaces you enter. Keep them close enough that someone could ask about the backstory if they happened to notice life’s details.

But give yourself the freedom to move around, to feel the lightness once in a while. And soon, you’ll start to feel excitement for the new endings for both of you, independently.

Because even though they are the person who ripped the future from you, they also made you believe it was possible for the first time. And their influences paint every good day you’ll have from now on.

You’ll know you’ve made it when you find yourself stealing glances at the corners where you left them. Sending silent messages into the past. Or maybe it’s the present. Maybe it’s the future that never could have been.

Wherever it goes, the message is the same.

I’m glad I didn’t know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance.\
I could have missed the pain, but I’d’ve had to miss the dance.