Depression, not wanting to burden anyone while you're slowly going downhill. Social anxiety, feeling like being looked at is suffocating. Feeling alone because everyone around you seems so happy while you're not. Pushing everyone away because you've already made a decision, smile for a bit longer, no one will notice when you're no longer around. THATS FALSE, but you felt like such a burden or an attention seeker for asking for help, you didn't want help. You wanted better. Things got better, but you had to go all the way down first.You saw the world as if everyone could only see your faults, you saw the world as if your mistakes were written all over you, but you couldn't say anything, no, you'd be annoying. But you weren't annoying. You were just different.
Judgement. You'll never be able to make everyone happy. People will ALWAYS judge you, people will ALWAYS have warped perceptions of you. It's important that you stop caring, and start being who YOU want to be, not worry about how they'll see you. It also goes into how no matter what you do, it feels like you can't do it right. That you don't have a sense of self because you spent all your life trying to be normal, ordinary even. But looking around, you realized that their perceptions of you was all in your head, and that you're really only judging yourself.
Three AM thoughts, overthinking, and all of them are genuinely thoughts I've had. They talk about the thoughts that some people have that we just don't really talk about. It's real, and I relate to it. As an autistic person, the verse "Would you go running if you saw the real me?" really resonates with masking to me, as I feel like I mask to bring comfort to others, to avoid making others uncomfortable or feeling like I don't like them. It really does go into the pressure of socializing and the anxiety that comes with a social life. I personally HATE being around people or talking to people, so it's a breath of fresh air to hear them sort of advocate for that in a way. To me, the verse about politics really hits hard in the aspect of not knowing what I believe, or at least not caring enough about politics to try to find something to believe. I really do love how this song is pretty much about not knowing. Not knowing and overthinking about everything I don't know, but I love the verse after the political one where he says "Theres one thing I know, that if you're f### racist then don't come to my show." Which expresses that he does have certain things figured out, just not everything. He doesn't have complete beliefs figured out, but he has some things personally figured out. Me, I'm the same way.
This one is pretty self explanatory, but I'll explain it's impact on me anyways. Drama has unfortunately followed me my whole life, and I'm only recently standing up for myself and shutting drama out of my life, but before that, this song helped me feel less alone, that drama follows everyone around. It also expresses the questions that anyone in a drama related space asks themselves. "When did my friends get so loud?" "When did all our problems get so small?" Those questions, especially the second one, really hit me because I would ask myself that all the time, almost every day. When did my problems just become another conversation for you to have with one another? When did my struggles just become another funny joke? Now that I'm in a better place, I realize that it's not just highschool that these things happen. I'm out of there, and now I realize that its quite frankly, the entire world. Grown adults acting like children because they CRAVE talking poorly about someone else.
The meaning behind this song talks about self worth, and how humans tend to associate their self worth with how they are percieved by others, speaking against it with the phrase "we are human after all and we don't stay for long." How humans associate self growth with how popular or famous they are, if people like them, then they are good enough. I always cared too much about peoples' perceptions of me, cared who liked me, desperately tried to get those who didn't like me to like me because I HATED the idea of making anyone uncomfortable or upset.
I relate to this song just like I relate to all of AJR's music, and I have since the beginning of middle school. Their music hits me in a different way now though. Before, this song resonated in the personal way, where I felt like I was different compared to everyone else (i was) and I didn't have friends, so I wanted to pass the time and skip to the future. Nowadays, I relate to the song on a level where I feel so behind compared to everyone else in my circle. I feel like everyone has got it all figured out and has grown up, while I can't even drive, haven't had a job, don't have any friends, and all I do is sit in front of this computer all day because I have no job-worthy skills or social skills. I just hope it passes sooner than the other time in my life did.
MY FAV AJR SONGS (all of them but if I HAVE to pick a few...)
This is for me to pretty much just show my love for AJR and the impact their music had on my life. YIPPPEEEEE
