Things are shifting after making big changes in my life: I can enjoy music again

I haven’t enjoyed music in over 5 months.

Boy do I miss it!

This has happened before. When I was going through breakups. For the third time in 6 years, music was no longer giving me joy.

Since November, whenever I listen to anything on my carefully crafted playlists, I feel heavy and uneasy.

I feel music viscerally inside my body.

And because it feels so bad, my body is not receptive to it. It’s not that the music especially reminds me of my ex. Although sometimes it does.

I’m sad and missing what was once familiar.

I wasn’t happy in my life before the breakup but I wasn’t in a transition like I am now where everything feels unmoored and so different. Different work, different social connections, different emotions, different life.

Before the breakup, there was a kind of stability in my life. Even if it felt precarious.

Music made things better.

Music was the thing that elevated moments in that precarious stability. I loved listening to our usual Sunday Morning Jazz playlists while making breakfast. Or the yacht rock that made us so happy as we drank wine after dinner.

Those musical interludes were some of the brighter moments in my old life.

And it’s not just the music that I listened to with him. Songs that energized me on my walks or while I did yard work also take me back to my life as it was.

My body aches to be back in that familiar state. And the soundtrack of that time in my life makes me acutely aware that there’s no going back.

Even if that’s not what I want.

Things are starting to shift.

The other day while at dinner with a friend, a song caught my attention as we were talking. It was a song I used to crank up on my car stereo as I drove to see my ex for the weekend. And my body didn’t reject it.

I felt drawn to it and was happy to hear it.

My body is saying yes to the music and it feels good. I can’t wait to fully enjoy my playlists again. And to creating new playlists for my new life.