Haunted Music

Well that was an eerie and emotionally brutal experience.

I’ve listened to music I enjoyed in my teens and early adulthood before, and sometimes it’s brought back bad memories and left a bad taste in my mouth, and sometimes I’ve laughed and felt embarrassed over the teenage angst that I associate with certain songs.

This – this was something entirely new and different.

I used to listen to a lot of Enya, and owned several of her albums. I hadn’t really played them in several years, but a recent song of hers had popped up as a suggestion, reminded me how much I used to enjoy her music, and I thought I’d assemble a playlist of my old favorites.

As I selected song titles to see if they were the ones I remembered I found, to my shock, that I was crying. Not because of bad or traumatic memories, but because I’d just found a ghost – the me that used to exist, the one that had innocent dreams and hopes, that loved beauty with an ecstatic intensity and had faith that she’d make her life a good and ultimately satisfying experience.

The life that I could have had, the life that I once believed I would have, was there, alive and breathing in Enya’s music. The artist, the writer, the would-be world traveler. The me that could have existed if I hadn’t been complicit in her murder. I remembered her, I remembered being her.

I’m sorry, past me. I thought I had to sacrifice you to save my soul, but killing you nearly destroyed me.