no running away, no starting over

This morning, my phone shuffled up a song I love, “I’ll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade.

If I could take the fire out from the water 
I’d share a life and you’d share a life 
If I could take the fire out from the water 
I’d take you where nobody knows you 
And nobody gives a damn 

This sentiment about going where nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn (“Oh look at the trees and look at my face and look at a place far away from here”) makes this song a kind of partner in my mind with “Brand New Colony” by The Postal Service:

I want to take you far from the cynics in this town
And kiss you on the mouth
We’ll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene,
Start a brand new colony
Where everything will change,
We’ll give ourselves new names
(identities erased)
The sun will heat the ground
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony

Everything will change

As a woman who is trans, there is an appeal to this sort of fantasy, the idea of going somewhere with someone and starting over with her in a place where preconceived notions about who I am just don’t exist, a place where we are truly free of the past and can escape the ugliness of the present.

But its appeal is so fantastical, so false, that even thinking about it quickly becomes unpleasant to me, like a dessert that’s much too sweet. “Everything will change,” the song says, but it won’t, and it really won’t if we run away from reality. 

What’s really romantic to me is the idea of finding a love I’m proud of and facing reality together, taking strength from each other, reflecting the truth of ourselves back at each other in a world that sometimes tries to make us doubt who we are and what we’re worth.

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Facing life is the only real thing; facing it together is the only really romantic thing to me.

There’s a line in that Wolf Parade song that goes:

We’ve both been very brave 
Walk around with both legs 
Fight the scary day 
We both pull the tricks out of our sleeves 

And I guess that’s what I want. Someone to fight the scary day with.

(Images from Kiss Me, which I wrote about last year)