Thoughts at 30,000 Feet

I hated how often you listened to Phoebe fucking Bridgers.

I couldn’t keep up with her angst, or tolerate how she screamed at the end of that song you always loved. Somehow you thought it was poetic, or at the very least, cathartic. I thought it was annoying.

Every time we were in a car, you turned up Phoebe fucking Bridgers and sang along with her melancholic and often brutally grim lyrics as if they were your own.

It made me uneasy.

It was a constant reminder of how differently I thought you and I saw the world, and how hard it was for you to not focus in on only the most troubling aspects of your life. This would turn out to be my greatest challenge in our relationship.

You see, Phoebe fucking Bridgers sings about trauma, and fear, and a borderline millennial/gen z doom characterized by climate change anxiety, toxic relationships, mental health, and what feels like impending doom. But when she sang, I heard your doom and god damnit, that doom felt like a weight tied to my ankle pulling me farther and farther away from my joy.

So I didn’t listen. In fact, I didn’t even try.

Phoebe fucking Bridgers was your thing, and I didn’t want- I didn’t need– any part in it. That doom was part of the reason I left. I was drowning in your woes, and I couldn’t breathe.

You see, I was scared. Scared that you, and Phoebe fucking Bridgers, would pull me so far and so deep that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the surface. That I would drown in your sorrow and anxiety and what felt like hatred of this world and everyone in it.

And I was scared that if she, and you, were right to be anxious about the state of our society, that it meant something bad about me.

But as I stood today on the platform of a train, dreading reuniting with my parents for a long flight back to our cancer-ridden home, to a job that I hate, to a grief-filled void of a love life and a grandfather in heart failure in the middle of the worst pandemic since 1918, all I wanted to do was listen to Phoebe. Fucking. Bridgers.

I wanted to scream with her at the end of the song you always loved. I wanted to word vomit from my emotional motion sickness. I wanted to be lost in the chaotic energy she creates that seemed to resonate with every person between 18 and 30 except me, until today.

I wanted to thank her for singing about her trauma, and her losses. I wanted to hug her for walking on stage in a stupid fucking skeleton jumpsuit at every concert she performs, and for tweeting at sexist boomers to mind their own fucking business. I wanted to thank her for being raw to a point that it makes you cry.

Phoebe fucking Bridgers got me through today. I imagine she’ll get me through many days to come in this especially challenging, grief-filled, isolating phase in my life. I realized that what I’m going through and how it’s making me feel? It’s not a choice. I always thought you had a choice.

So what I want to say to you to is this: I’m sorry if I made you feel like dread, fear, and sadness were not valid emotions critical to the human experience. I’m sorry that I hoped you would stop ‘focusing on the bad’, and in turn, stop listening to Phoebe fucking Bridgers. You were grief-ridden, too. For your family. For our futures. For yourself. I didn’t know what that felt like until now.

And most importantly, I want to say I’m sorry for not seeing you when we were together. I’m glad at least Phoebe fucking Bridgers did. She held you, and now she’s holding me, too.