Bitch!

Tonight, I'm going to give you a taste of what my days sounded like at the end of August and the beginning of September in 2007. You may think I'm cheating because there won't be a whole lot of writing involved, but after two very long days in a row (one awesome, one frustrating), this is all I've got tonight. And it's a blog post I've wanted to write for a long time.

Funny enough, I heard someone say in the meeting I was at last night that he “had to break up with crystal meth”. I say funny enough because that's exactly what those early days were like for me. Crystal had been my entire life for more than three years. Whether I did it consciously or not, I ultimately chose crystal over everything else in my life. I gave up friends, apartments, the love of my life. You name it, I prioritized meth above it. And then the bitch betrayed me.

It wasn't even a conscious thing. I just realized one day that for about a month all I was listening to on my iPod were scorned lover songs. Here are some of the ones I was wearing out that month.

Better Off Alone – There is only one song in my iTunes with a higher play count than this song and number three on the list has 80 fewer plays. I listened to this song a LOT. I played it on the subway. I played it at home. I played it walking down 8th Avenue. Now, the play count feature in iTunes is a little weird and it doesn't update all the time, but just to give you an example of how much I played this song. I love Mad About You by Belinda Carlisle. It's one of my ten favorite songs ever. According to iTunes, I've played Better Off Alone six times for each time I've played Mad About You. And honestly, it really could have been written about getting off crystal meth. Listen to the words.

Strong Enough – This was a song that I played over and over after an actual break up in 1999, but I pulled it back out for another run in 2007.

Since U Been Gone – It's not like I ever needed a reason to play my favorite pop song of all time, but I had it in heavy rotation during those first three months.

Over It – This is also from Katharine McPhee's first album, which I bought early in 2007 when it was first released, but didn't really connect with until almost September.

Irreplaceable (DJ Speedy remix) – I loved this version because they didn't edit the line at the beginning where she sings, “In my closet, that's my stuff. If I bought it nigga please don't touch.” You just don't expect that shit to come out of Beyoncé's mouth, so it's fan-fucking-tastic when it does.

You Thought Wrong – Like any other Kelly Clarkson song, I'll use any excuse to listen to it. But I especially loved the laughter at the end during this time period.

Whew. 502 words (before this sentence). Just barely made it.