The type of girl I know my daddy, he'd be proud of...
I wrote this piece in August of 2017, a few weeks after my dad passed. I pitched it out to a few music blogs, but since it's so rough around the edges it never got picked up. Luckily, I have Steemit now - a place to post all of these ramblings. Hope you enjoy.
It was a Sunday night when I found out my father was gone. The next day, I was facing a 2 hour car ride alone, with bloodshot eyes and misplaced guilt weighing heavy on my chest.
My mom told me the drive would be good for me. At the time, it was hard to articulate how certain I was that nothing would be good for me ever again. So I did what felt familiar: I got in the car and pressed play on SZA’s CTRL.
The first stage of grief is denial, and denial was what I felt as I drove down the highway, windows down and speakers blasting in the car my dad bought me. Luckily, CTRL is the kind of album that requires an internal force when you sing along to it.
My first relief, then, came in the form of distraction.
“Heard you got some new homies, got some new hobbies, even a new hoeeee too!”
I sang it, and felt it, with my chest. With an album like CTRL, you have to feel it in your gut to properly sing along -- one hand off the wheel with an acrylic nail enunciating every word. The required emotional commitment to SZA’s lyrics took my mind off my own pain, if even just for a moment.
Denial and the next stage of grief, anger, walk hand-in-hand. I don’t feel angry with my dad for passing, though it maybe could have been prevented. Instead, my anger was regrettably directed at both SZA and I’s favorite target: The Ex.
My first instinct when I heard the news was to write to mine. His response took two days.
I understand SZA from the bottom of my core when she says on Drew Barrymore, “I get so lonely, I forget what I’m worth.” Despite the fact that nearly every person I knew was contacting me, the one person who’s sympathy I needed wasn’t.
It felt like hell.
With only headphones to protect me from the outside world, the ins and outs of CTRL padded the sadness. Once again, SZA lent me control in moments where I felt like I was losing it.
Solana asks on Anything, “Do you even know I’m alive?”
I wanted to scream that question from the rooftop of the Best Western so loudly it would crack the eardrums of my ex, hundreds of miles away. Do you even know I’m alive? Do you realize how quickly I could just not be?
Eventually, he responded. It was cordial, but nothing like what I wanted to hear. His words didn’t look anything like the paragraphs I’d written for him in my head -- a fault of my own creation.
I realize that this kind of pity bargaining, coincidentally the third stage of grief, is selfish. He doesn’t owe me comfort, and using him as a stand-in for the pain I feel isn’t fair to either of us. The only reason I wanted to speak to him specifically is to be reminded that there’s still a man who loves me.
Instead, in the absence of two men, I have sounds and lyrics. As I always have.
“Need you for the old me, need you for my sanity. Need you to remind me where I come from. Can you remind me of my gravity? Ground me when I'm tumblin', spiralin', plummetin' down to Earth…”
The fourth and most difficult stage of grief is depression. There were no lyrics to help me through this part, so I relied on sounds. J. Dilla’s Donuts when I’m trying to sleep, and CTRL anytime else.
At this point, I’ve memorized every nook and cranny of CTRL’s production. Like re-reading a book you’ve read a hundred times, hearing the songs ebb and flow out of each other became a way for me to meditate and take my mind off of the discomfort of being alone. The way CTRL bounces from softness to anger and back again helps me maintain control as my grief carries me through the same waves.
In moments when the world could have closed in on me, I’m grateful to have a dynamic piece of art that doesn’t get stale even when played three times in a row -- an album that reminds me to breathe, recenter and find my control.
When you get to the end of the record, you're greeted by SZA’s mother’s voice speaking on why control matters to her.
“And if it's an illusion, I don't want to wake up. I'm gonna hang on to it. Because the alternative...is an abyss. It’s a hole of darkness and nothingness.”
Whether through distraction or finding the perfect words to describe how it feels to be 20 something and alone, SZA’s vulnerability and honesty remind me that I am, after all, just a Normal Girl.
Maybe, then, I just need to pray a little harder or work a little smarter. I take comfort in knowing that’s exactly what my dad would have told me to do.
