265. Song No. 4,013: “Goodnight,” Idlewild
Warnings/Promises, 2005

Right, so. In keeping with the theme of being a psychological mess right now partly because of death and that awful first holiday season in its wake but mostly because of physical distance (I swear I’ll get past this all one day but, uh…. that day’s not gonna be today), it’s pretty goddamn apt that one of BFF’s favorite bands from college got me right in the heart with this song, the timing of which was even better for coming right after full-heartedly bitching about how old it makes me feel to realize that albums’ allegedly last song trailing off into long silences before the hidden track pounced from the nothingness were a delightful easter egg back in the days of CDs and are just an agonizingly interminable annoyance with digital music refusing to split them and thus rendering the former forever ineligible for playlist inclusion because no one wants to hear long stretches of silence.

In this case, that reemergence from the quiet comes with the gut-punch line “No one stays in the same place for too long,” which is not at all what I needed to hear after it’s been everything I’ve whimpered to myself and railed against with every ounce of denial I can summon for, like, two and a half years at this point just because I don’t want to deal with it, and especially because I don’t want to get comfortable with this yawning chasm of an entire continent between me and the closest person I’ll ever have to a sister but, I mean, the alternative just means uncontrollable crying jags for weeks at a time that were getting really, really inconvenient before a more different grief hijacked everything and wrought havoc on an emotional landscape that might have been built on being a little too sensitive but was at least familiar.

Back in college, in the early days of our friendship and an era I would happily relive, I remember how excited bestie was when this album came out, and how her glee was so infectious it got me listening to Idlewild in the first place. Now, almost 20 years later, we both put my favorite song of theirs on the respective, retrospective and deeply nostalgic college-highlights playlists we made for each other before I flew out to see her last month. And while, yes, I’ve learned the hard way to get the most from every visit since they turned into things that mean planning and PTO and jetlag, and it’s how I learned that everyone who’s still close by just hasn’t had a chance to leave yet, I’ve also only recently figured out that I have to start dealing with every goodbye hurting just as much as the last one and being a fresh hurt every time and crying my way through a security line while the poor TSA agent tries to talk to me like I’m an adult with some control over her emotions in public. And it sucks now, but it does work both ways because I’m also learning that welcome life changes are accessible to me, too, and that no one staying in the same place for too long means that I can eventually close that distance instead of being threatened by and hostilely regarding it in equal measures.