Die Young — Sylvan Esso
warm and windy in the South Loop
Just to give a bit of a warning:
This piece chats about/around suicide, depression, and the mid-aughts <3
I had it all planned out before you met me
Was gonna leave early and so swiftly
Maybe in a fire or crash off a ravine
People would weep, "How tragic, so early"
In just one month, I’ll be 40 years old.
I’m not sure how long I thought I’d live, but I don’t really remember thinking I’d make it this far.
I’m not unfamiliar with thinking about my own death.
I’ve both contemplated and attempted to take my own life early on. I couldn’t, for the life of me (lol), figure out why my life was going the way it was. I’d become my own therapist and used every resource I could to try and find the answer to the question many of us have asked, Why Me?
I never figured it out. I never found the answers.
I waited things out quite patiently, I think at that point, and no change. So I figured that the problem must be me, and that the solve would be to remove myself from the equation.
I don’t remember thinking it was a big deal. I thought that maybe, for a short time, some people might be sad but I’d felt so alone at that point in my life—and been left alone so much—that I then felt like, who would really care?
I’d be fine because I’d be gone and finally, FINALLY, everything would stop.
I perfectly understood that it was a permanent solution, but to me, it didn’t feel like I was having a temporary problem.
I was gonna die young
Now I gotta wait for you, honey
Now I gotta wait for you, honey
Now I gotta wait for you, honey
I found Sylvan Esso years ago, right before their first album, Sylvan Esso, came out. I do not remember where I was when I heard the song Coffee, but I loved it. It was one of those songs of the 2010s that felt so of the time.
It felt like a night at Beauty Bar, it sounded like a morning of getting ready, it reminded me of an overnight shift with my friends trying to stay awake surrounded by jeans and separated mannequin parts.
I’m not truly a full album girlie.
I’m guilty of finding two songs and repeating them, or shuffling an album, just listening for the song that makes me want to press the star next to it. But Sylvan Esso became one of my favorite albums start to finish, and later one of my favorite bands.
The first time I saw them in concert was in Chicago at Empty Bottle, i basically sprinted home from my nanny job, called a friend (who lived in the suburbs) and said “I’m going to walk over there now and save our spot in line”.
How very youthful it was of me to stand in a line for hours without even a whiff of a guarantee of entry. But, we got in…and we were the last few who did.
I stood in that tight space and watched my favorite band play to a room of folks who felt the same way I did about their music, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
Time passed, I stayed a fan, and in 2017 they released Die Young off their album What Now, and the song stuck with me.
My interpretation of the song is quite literal: someone had a plan to live life until they were done and end it on their terms before the beauty of life and aging set in. But they fell in love—with someone or something—and now…the plans have fucking changed.
When I heard the song I didn’t connect with the love part at all being anything romantic, I did however immediately connect with the feeling of choosing to die young.
I had it all planned out before you met me
I had a plan, you ruined it completely
I had it all planned out before you met me
I had a plan, you ruined it completely
At the time, when death was something I was choosing, I didn’t feel like I had much to live for. I was young, so some may say life hadn’t met me fully yet, but that wasn’t the point. The one that had found me wasn’t the one I wanted. It wasn’t for lack of trying….
(It's not like I chose, Not like I tried)
Again, time passed, and life, somehow, got better. I lived more, I tried harder, I blocked and pushed away a lot, and I moved forward in life, happy to be living in the moment, happy I didn’t opt out but never fully put the option down.
It creeps up at times, usually when I’m at my lowest, but pushing it away became…”easier”
Usually, when I write these, it’s because something has happened in my life to make me reconnect to the song.
This time it was wanting to give up.
I’ve been fighting with my brain more than ever before. I lose lots of battles, but I win a whole bunch too. I fear that the part of my brain that I succumbed to so easily in the past is fighting me harder than ever before—but it’s probably because I’m fighting harder than I think I ever have. I’m also fighting on a new field I guess, it feels like every worry I could possibly have in the world, every fear I could have ever had, every problem I was scared to face, just every absolutely frightening thing that goes bump in the night is happening to me right now.
So much is tough up there in my brain, like, chat—we’re in a warzone every fucking day.
I’m quite exhausted, actually!
Anyway, I had a very, very, very low point a few months ago. Losing one of those battles in my brain in a big way, I panicked. I called my mom, who I am actually not talking to much these days, in a fucking frantic state and told her I just couldn’t anymore.
Like, I was done. Trying at everything was finally too hard again, and I’d rather opt out.
She called back, I ignored it, and she left me a voicemail that probably saved me, which is interesting ‘cos in the past it’s all I wanted was to be saved because I was so sick of saving myself.
But, hearing your mother say she refuses to bury you will do something to you.
I am only recently becoming a fan of birthdays; aging was never the issue, I know what it is to be blessed with another year of life as a Black queer person. Knowing that makes me feel even worse because I always think about those who would have given anything to be living my life, no matter the difficulty, but knowing that doesn’t make any feelings of wanting to leave it behind just magically go away.
The issue was that the birthdays were a reminder of my pain, a reminder that I was still enduring so many things that the wishes on cakes just never stopped. The anger, sadness, shame, secrets, and pain were piling up year after year.
Months have passed since that moment in January, and things are still tough up there, but having some things, some people, some future, some love, some growth, is what soothes me in certain times.
I wrote this to get it out of me, in hopes that getting it out would make me feel less disappointed in myself for letting my brain get the best of me. And sad as it may be, it’s working.
Also, NOT listening to this song helps too. I’m the type to listen to things or watch things that match how I feel….guess my astro sign. Sometimes that helps because it’s a reminder to not push away any emotions, but other times it hurts because the line blurs and I ended up leaning too far into them.
Sylvan Esso has many songs that have better memories for me, and I’ll instead listen to those. Also, just last week they posted they’ve got new songs on the way, so who knows what they have in store for me.
So, I’ll have to put this song down. Try to tuck it away deep into the Apple Music universe and move forward.
I’m glad i’m still here & i’m glad that you are too.
