What’s In Your Head (In Your Heaaaaaaad)?

Zombie. Zombie. Zombie-ie-ie.

Another song. Not really related to anything poly though. Sorry.

I’m sure I’m not alone in sometimes needing to just put on music and to mentally slip away for awhile. Some people might consider it meditation. Others processing. Whatever it is, I use this same coping mechanism too.

What I think might be slightly different though, is that instead of finding the right song and turning it down, I need to turn it up to 11 and really drown myself in the sound of it all. If I have on tranquil, soothing music at a low volume, I’ll be relaxed, sure, but my mind isn’t going to do much of anything, just get sleepy and calm. My long since adopted process is to find the song I need (lots of energy, commotion, probably down-tuned guitars) and turn it up as high as I can take it so that it almost becomes a steady white noise to my brain.

Today I had the urge to listen to “Zombie”, and so on my walk back from lunch I cranked the volume and put Spotify on repeat. I didn’t have any breakthroughs, there were no massive revelations, I don’t think I even thought about all that much, but what it created was a safe and calming space for me to exist in for a few minutes.

Anyway, just a random quirk about my day I wanted to share. But it does make me curious, what are some of the coping mechanisms (musically or otherwise) that you use to get through it all?

Wait for It

Another song.

The song: “Wait For It”

Selected lyrics:
Love doesn’t discriminate
between the sinners and the saints,
it takes and it takes and it takes.

And we keep loving anyway
We laugh and we cry
and we break
and we make our mistakes.

And if there’s a reason I’m by her side
when so many have tried
then I’m willing to wait for it.
I’m willing to wait for it.

…

I am the one thing in life I can control
I am inimitable
I am an original.

I’m not falling behind or running late
I’m not standing still,
I am lying in wait.

———-

I’ve listened to this about 20 times in a row at the moment, and it’s still on repeat. This might be my night.

All I can control is myself. More and more I’m internalizing that. It’s affording me calm and strength. It puts me back in control of my life. I can’t help who and how I feel love. I can control my actions, but the feelings will be real whether I address them or not.

Would That Be Enough?

As I’m reading, learning, and studying everything about how I feel and what I want, I’ve started to connect and process my thoughts through several forms of media.

One of the ways I’ve always regulated my emotions was through music, and in the past few days I’ve started to collect some songs that put me in a place, or frame my mindset.

The song: “That Would Be Enough”

https://open.spotify.com/track/6oF8ueLn5hIl4PRp17sxW6​

Selected Lyrics:

Look at where you are
Look at where you started
The fact that you’re alive is a miracle
Just stay alive, that would be enough

And if this child
Shares a fraction of your smile
Or a fragment of your mind, look out world!
That would be enough

I don’t pretend to know
The challenges you’re facing
The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind

But I’m not afraid
I know who I married
So long as you come home at the end of the day
That would be enough

We don’t need a legacy
We don’t need money
If I could grant you peace of mind
If you could let me inside your heart…

Oh, let me be a part of the narrative
In the story they will write someday
Let this moment be the first chapter:
Where you decide to stay

And I could be enough
And we could be enough
That would be enough

———-

Oof, I mean, did you read that? This song just guts me every time. I can hear my wife singing this to me, pleading with me to love her in the way she loves me.

And I want this love too. I want her and I against the world, ready to face whatever life throws at us together. In a lot of ways, I wish that that was all I felt, that it was just as simple as that. But it never really has been.

“Peace of mind,” that’s the part that really sticks with me. That it’s not anything she’s failing to do, it’s not that our relationship isn’t strong. It’s that I don’t have that peace of mind. I don’t know if I ever will, because I don’t know if I ever have. It would be so much simpler to press this all down, to shut it out, and to just focus on the good things I have and live the life in front of me. But will that lead to peace of mind? I don’t believe so.

I think there will always be regret, wondering, questioning, longing. I don’t know if exploring poly or being in an open relationship changes any of this, but it might. It seems like it could.

But it’s also so, so damn selfish. My wife is mono, and just wants love and devotion, in the same way she loves me and is devoted to me. And that’s not a tall ask. And it’s what I promised her, when we began, when I proposed, when we we’d.