Spotify Wrapped of My Dating History

“Payphone (Clean Version)” / Maroon 5 / 2012
In middle school, paradise was only $1.29 away on iTunes. I picked this as “our song”
for my seventh grade romance because we both liked it, and I guess that meant
something. I would listen to it as my mind doodled daydreams of my “boyfriend” who I
never talked to in person. When we broke up one month later, he became like this
Maroon 5 song constantly playing on the radio.
 

“Gotta Have You” / The Weepies / 2015
While crossing paths in the high school hallway, this song fluttered in my head as
summer hummed off of him. We were two butterflies in a subway. He was my first
morning cup of coffee, and there was never enough time before it cooled.

“Sort Of” / Ingrid Michaelson / 2015
I loved him like a band t-shirt, like the one I got on the night before the end of tenth
grade at an Ingrid Michaelson concert. I checked my phone every two minutes waiting
for a reply from him like I was staring down a birthday candle willing a flame to come. It
took hours to hear back. As Ingrid sang, “My love’s too big for you my love,” I stood in
the crowd, knowing.
 

“Liability” / Lorde / 2017
My fingertips were melting blue lipstick on the keys as I played the beginning of this
song for him on a piano we came across on our first date. “Just something I’m learning.
I don’t know.” I said. After, I turned to him and saw two blown-out birthday candles in his
eyes. You’re a little much for me.

“Pink + White” / Frank Ocean / 2017
Shared headphones kissed our ears on the bus as I turned on this song for the girl who
asked me to be hers. On our first date, we rode our bikes to the top of a hill overlooking
the skyline, and she said, “Think of all the people simultaneously saying I love you right
now.” And I would have said it, but not in the way she wanted me to.
 

“I Wanna Be Yours” / Arctic Monkeys / 2018
As I stood in the doorway in front of him, I wanted to be able to make the lyrics of this
song playing hammer into him the way they did for me. I wanna be a red lipstick stain
on your mug. I wanna be your favorite pajamas. I wanna be Fourth of July in your
mouth. I wanna be yours. I wanna be yours. I wanna be yours.

 

“When” / Dodie / Present
I’m sick of only being able to listen to love songs on auto-tune and shaking my Magic 8
Ball heart asking, “when?” But still, I lean over the cake year after year wishing the
same thing: that one day a chandelier of birthday candles will reveal itself.