I got my heart broken a few weeks ago.
Like, really broken.
Ever since then, every time I get in my car and the car starts playing my music automatically, one of the songs that’s on our shared playlist comes on. Even if I’m deliberately trying to avoid our shared playlist. (Unless I want to get the feels out and then it’s super effective at triggering the waterworks.)
These days, I almost always have my music on random shuffle. I like playing musical roulette and letting the Universe tell me what it wants me to know through music. Except that game isn’t so much fun when our shared songs come on constantly, with little to no regard for my feelings if I’m in carpool or at the Starbucks drive-thru or when my kids are in the car with me.
“It’s okay, sweetie, Mommy’s heart just got ripped to shreds, but I’mma wipe all these tears away and walk over to the baseball field and sit with all the other baseball parents like nothing at all happened.” You can only imagine the teenage embarrassment.
So I realized a new playlist was needed, and needed now.
But I truly didn’t want it to be your ordinary sad-sack breakup playlist. I didn’t want it to make me cry…I could go back to our stupid, jerkface shared playlist if I wanted to dive deep into the bleeding, gaping holes of my bruised and battered heart. That works like a frickin’ charm. (Even when I’m in a restaurant and one of those songs come on. So inconvenient.)
So I came up with some rules for this new twist on a breakup playlist that I wanted to create for myself:
1. The songs had to be mostly upbeat. I didn’t want to wallow. I wanted an upbeat reminder to my heart (and all those frickin’ memories in my head) that the Universe knows what the hell it’s doing and to trust it. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but only because they are Maroon 5 and Coldplay songs, so they had to be included.
2. There needed to be a fair smattering of Maroon 5 and Coldplay songs. Because, duh. But I actually stayed away from their most sad ones. The ones I chose felt like they had the right tone…more accepting of endings than sadness over them.
3. No country songs. I used to listen to country when I first came to Colorado a million years ago, and I started listening to it again because of the cute heart-breaker boy…and fell in love with it while I was falling in love with him. So no country songs. Full stop.
4. They had to tell a story. Because I’m a writer and we love stories. If you listen to this playlist, it tells a story from beginning to end. But hitting shuffle is still always acceptable. But don’t listen too closely to lyrics. Some of them hit home and some of them don’t at all…and I’m not going to share which is which. But stories are always good.
5. There had to be humor. There are one or two songs that are totally tongue-in-cheek and just make me laugh. And there is nothing I need more in my life right now.
6. They had to be empowering songs. Some of them are more accepting than empowering, but the overall feeling of the playlist had to leave me feeling empowered.
7. You have to give it an epic playlist title. The playlist I shared with the cute boy who broke my heart was titled Beautiful Stranger, because that was one of the first songs I shared with him and that he commented on and sang to me…a lot. With his frickin’ velvet voice. FFS. Personally, I went for a laugh for my playlist title. I’m not going to share my playlist title here, because it was more to make me laugh than it was about the cute boy, but DM me if you’re curious and I might share it with you.
Okay, that’s it. Those were my rules. Now, here’s my playlist. It is giving me life right now. And happy moments in between all the sadness that I am wading through…only a fraction of which was caused by losing this lovely soul.
1. This Summer’s Gonna Hurt Like a Motherf*cker — Maroon 5
2. Break My Heart — Dua Lipa
3. Julianna Calm Down — The Chicks
4. Circles — Post Malone
5. This Love — Maroon 5
6. Fun — Coldplay & Tove Lo
7. Bad Romance — Lady Gaga
8. Nothing Lasts Forever — Maroon 5
9. The Beautiful Ones — Prince
10. Not Falling Apart — Maroon 5
11. The Feeling — Justin Bieber & Halsey
12. Beautiful Goodbye — Maroon 5
13. Savage Love — Jason Derulo
14. Don’t Let It Break Your Heart — Coldplay
15. Take Care — Drake and Rihanna
16. Broken & Beautiful — Kelly Clarkson
17. Best 4 U — Maroon 5
18. Good as Hell — Lizzo
19. Me & My Girls — Selena Gomez & The Scene
20. Don’t Start Now — Dua Lipa
21. Woman Up — Meghan Trainor
22. Bang Bang Bang — Selena Gomez & The Scene
23. Unwritten — Natasha Bedingfield
In all seriousness, I have had more heartbreak since my divorce almost two years ago than I had before my marriage — and definitely more than I was ever prepared for.
But it’s time to send those not meant for us on their way with nothing but love…and then take our power back. I hope this playlist — or your own version of it — helps you do just that. You deserve it.
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash