I have always used music to index time, since I was a little kid. I may not remember exact dates, but I can often remember the exact details of what was happening around me the first time I hear a song.

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Title and Registration” was one of those songs that I had sitting on my iPod for a long time before it finally played on shuffle. I think it might have been almost two years from the time I uploaded it to iTunes and the time I first heard it: I was leaving Pala and driving randomly east, and I remember almost driving off a cliff because I was so engrossed by the lyrics:

There’s no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it’s gone it’s like it wasn’t there at all
And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night

As depressing as that sentiment is, I found it strangely comforting this one night I couldn’t sleep and felt like I was going to die from sadness (and perhaps a perforated ulcer from too much stress—I can still remember the burning ache tearing through my epigastrium.) And even now it reminds me of a brief four months that were perhaps the happiest I’ve been for a long, long while, pretending that things were going to work out (and knowing in the back of my mind that I was going to let it all fall apart, or more accurately, it was never in my hands anyway, and it was always going to end in tears, but whatever….)

So maybe where I am now, metaphysically-speaking, is nowhere near as bad as those desolate months in the aftermath of my eventual catastrophic disappointment. The years have flown by since, grim and humorless, and while I wouldn’t go so far to say that I’m happy in my solitude, at least I’m not suicidally depressed.