Drag Me to super hell
Content warning: toxic relationships
That’s the working title of my first novel, the name my current manuscript bears on my personal computer. Drag Me to Super Hell.
It’s the story about what happens when the first person to love you for who you are becomes the most toxic person in your life. It’s the true story of how an Air Force officer and a standup comedian met and fell in love and fell apart.
And it’s what that Air Force officer said to me on our first date. We were hunched over in the midday heat on the Yorktown Ben & Jerry’s patio, talking about pinky promises. I’m sure I’d brought it up to be silly, that he’d offered to show me how to do something later and I’d said “do you pinky promise?”
He had stuck out his pinky. And right before we clasped our fingers, right before any part of ourselves ever touched the other person, he’d said, serious as the grave: “You have to mean it. If you break a pinky promise, you go to Super Hell.”
We broke a lot of promises to each other. I haven’t seen him in years, but I guess I’ll see him in Super Hell.
Before I began writing the novel that would heal me from us, I had music. The playlist that helped me build the book is now over 17 hours long (yes, you read that right), but it started with three songs:
“The Black and White” by The Band CAMINO
“Youngblood” by 5 Seconds of Summer
“Hammer” by nothing,nowhere.
These songs found me at the exact right time. In that way, Spotify was just as instrumental (wasn’t going to miss a chance to pun) in my recovery as my friends were.
The first time the Air Force officer left me and left me reeling, I had The Black and White by The Band CAMINO. I couldn’t ask him why he suddenly cut me out or what I’d done, but listening to that song helped me fill in the gaps. In the line “‘Cause I spaced myself from you, ‘cause I got tired of hurting you/ but now I’m hurting too” I began to see that someone else’s trauma wasn’t my fault.
Then the officer came back. I was ecstatic my sunlight had returned. All the healing I’d done dissipated in the light. I was too relieved and foolish to realize he’d just leave again when things got uncomfortable. And then he’d come back because he missed me. Lather, rinse, and repeat, like a group shower in Purgatory.
Enter Youngblood. “Say you want me, say you want me out of your life, I’m just a dead man walking tonight/ Say you want me, say you want me, back in your life, I’m just a dead man crawling tonight.”
5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) released Youngblood at exactly the time I most needed to hear it. I needed to hear that other people had lived through this high-intensity yo-yo of emotions.
Every time he left me, I’d cling to that song. And every time I heard that song, I imagined screaming it in the dark with a bunch of strangers as stage lights dripped a rainbow over us.
I was never going to be strong enough to cut that yo-yo string on my own. I loved him too much, and I thought I could love him through what was shattering us.
And I was too invested – over a year of my life went into building us, triaging myself, and trying to help him. I was young, and I didn’t understand that you can’t want something for someone else.
In March of the following year, I decided to move cities. I began to think of a life without him in it, even though I desperately wanted him by my side. I was working my nightshift copydesk job when Spotify slid me “Hammer” by nothing,nowhere. Arguably one of the happier nothing,nowhere. songs, it found me at the point dawn began to break on my darkest day.
I played Hammer all the time after that. I played it at work, I played it when I visited my future city to look at apartments. I played it on the plane to visit my sister. And now, when I play “Hammer” it reminds me of the day I realized I was going to be okay. “Hammer” froze in amber what it meant to carry on.
Joe (the man behind nothing,nowhere.) is likely used to hearing how his music has saved lives. Count me among them.
I found these three songs – The Black and White, Youngblood, and Hammer – in 2017. It’s been five years. These bands have grown, and so have I. The pandemic encumbered my ability to see them in concert until this year.
The Band CAMINO may never play The Black and White at a live show, but I’ve had the great honor of chatting with other fans about how much it means to them. A girl can dream. And beg on Twitter.
Nothing,nowhere. seems contractually obligated to play “Hammer,” and I got the distinct pleasure of experiencing it from the front row of the pit on the Trauma Factory tour. It will always lift my spirit (this is a reaper joke).
I got inspired to write this essay because last week, I got tic-tac-toe. After two years and multiple rescheduled dates, 5SOS finally came to town. I almost didn’t go – it was Independence Day weekend, I didn’t want to leave my family vacation early, and in the intervening years The Band CAMINO had gotten too famous to be the opener for the tour.
I was two 5 Seconds of Summer albums behind. I figured they’d play one or two old songs I’d know. I didn’t dare to dream “Youngblood” would show up on the Calm tour, no matter how popular it was.
5SOS played it as their encore.
As I stood in that crowd, howling the words with everything in me, I remembered the me from 2017, the girl who played this song on her commute home and cried more nights than not, the girl for whom this Australian band had provided a shred of comfort and community. I couldn’t be the me I am without her.
It’s been so, so wonderful to reconnect with these bands that shaped me, that lent a hand when I was most in need. There’s a bunch of people I personally know who lent a hand too, but I put them in the book. So for balance, I’m putting these bands on my blog.