I have very intense memories attached to some songs, a few are good memories that bring back a specific moment in my life, etc. But the most enduring/ vivid are attached to bad memories and result in the song being ruined for a long time.
The biggest example of this is the Elliott Smith song "Pitseleh," which I loved my freshman year until the actual worst night of my life when I instantly realized I had no friends and was betrayed by someone I thought was my friend, at 3am. And the person telling me off was a boy I looooovvvveeeeeeddddddd, though not really, well I loved him in a first intense crush kind of love. BTW I probably deserved to be told off, but it was such a fucked up, complicated year that I don't in any way blame my fragile, unhardened mind. Anyways. I literally had a panic attack and had to wake up my RA. I ended up spending the night on the floor of a kind hearted girl who didn't detest my presence like the rest of them, listening to Pitseleh over and over, struggling to be able to breath.
Basically the whole song spoke to me. Like, the whole thing. I felt so guilty for what had happened and so hurt. I couldn't listen to the song for about a year. Like it made me so uncomfortable to listen to it. Until another life shattering moment Sophomore year where I sat in my dorm room, with no lights on, and created a slide show on my laptop with the song Pitselah as the background. It seemed like the most fitting choice. So thus, now the song is associated with the greatest slideshow ever created.
Well, the point of this is, it's happened again. I can't listen to the song Raglan Road anymore. A song that several months ago was my favorite song. I associate it with June this year, a month where I thought everything in my life was great, that things I deserved were really happening to me, that I would actually be able to forget old feelings, cryptic shit, etc. Well then my life literally fell apart with the worst week of my life, which then brought on months of crippling anxiety and self-esteem issues, etc. So now, that's all I can think of when I listen to the greatest Irish song ever. Tragedy.
