Day 323 - Sad Songs on the Radio

 Sad Songs on the Radio

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

The song in the background was telling a story about how strong someone was after the fact. Surely, they were over compensating for something. Or maybe they had overcome. But then what was the point of the song? A reminder? A mantra? Maybe by repeating it enough times, it had come true. Maybe that was the secret. Like a vision board. Anything is possible if you tell yourself to believe it. All this waste of time and money on string theory and dark matter, and they should have just been chanting a mantra all along.

I worried every time Alice didn’t pick up her phone. No text. No message. No DMs on any of the platforms. Months could go by and that was okay, but when the message went out, the message was supposed to be responded to.

It was almost Thanksgiving. Chris had killed himself three days before. I found out about it in college nearly four months later when I bumped into an old high school friend Phil who told me the story.

Alice hadn’t picked up her phone. They had broken up. Again. Again and again. She was under no obligation to pick up the phone and listen to his broken-hearted anger or threats or sorrow or whatever it would have been that time. She had heard it all before. She probably thought she would hear it all again.

I wonder if she regrets not picking up that phone.

I mean, of course she does. But also, like, what can you do? No one phone call was going to stop the inevitable. But you don’t want to be the last person someone calls. No one needs that on their mind forever.

Forever doesn’t seem as long as it used to.

If someone tells you they are fine, you have to believe them. If someone pushes you away when you are kind or when you offer tough love or anything in-between, sometimes you don’t feel like answering the phone.

The following summer Alice and I found ourselves talking at parties away from everyone else. We found ourselves going to parks after the parties ended. We didn’t talk about pain or sorrow or regret, but we both knew the medications the other had been on, and we both probably needed someone who would understand without asking too many questions.

We held hands while on the swings. Maybe out of friendship and comradery. Maybe because it was nice to hold another human’s hand when you’re both overwhelmed and depressed. We didn’t talk about it or name it or soil it by needed to reduce or find meaning.

I tasted sweat on her lips one humid summer evening. We held each other and cried. And the night went on until the sun came up. I have no idea how much that night meant to her, but I think of it. One of those memories.

Six years later Alice’s younger sister developed pancreatic cancer. I don’t know why things like that happen to good people. I read Sally’s poetry after. No one has enough time to pay attention to every hobby or dream of those around them. I could have tried harder. Alice wasn’t my family. Sally wasn’t my family. But I should have tried harder.  

The songs they play are sad. Times of trouble and angles and memories and all sorts of morose emotion. As if hearing sad songs is going to make someone happy. I couldn’t tell Alice to get up and dance or sing karaoke or run around with a smile repeating some inane quote of salvation. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, but Alice seemed to get more than her fair share. Not that she was a magnet or a catalyst. Just a shitty life sometimes. I can only imagine how many tears she has cried.

Still, I wish she would answer her messages. I can’t know. I can’t drive nine-hundred miles at the drop of a hat. I can’t go back a decade to that summer and hold on a little bit longer. But it really would be nice to get a reply, just to be sure, just to know.