You Don't Do It For Me Anymore

by Demi Lovato and Chloe Angelides

You didn’t expect this day to come. Not in reality. You may have fantasized, “I could go off,” you said to yourself many times over. The imaginary fights bubbling under the surface surpassed by the desire to keep things civil. They always blew over, though his faults were added to the figurative list over time. Reasons not to trust him accumulated. But because they weren’t voiced, they were easier to forget. It was only when he messed up again that you remembered why you would never go there. 

This time, with some distance from the last offense, things went wrong. You spoke up, and things fell apart. It’s what you always feared, and for some reason, it hurt. You thought you could finally express your feelings about how he hurt you, and then he handed them back to you, mangled at your feet. Even worse, you kept trying. Begging him to accept your side of things. Instead he beat down each offering, coldly. A mess of tears, you just wanted it to end. “Please, can we go back? Forget the whole thing?” He didn’t accept that either. And you realize why you hadn’t spoken up before. Not out of desire to keep it civil, but to protect your peace. You never could have known how violently it would be disrupted. Your heart was ripped a bit too far. Now you could never go back, even if he asked. It was always going to end this way. 

There’s so much fighting nowadays, predicated by how many people you can interact with every day. I’m not very good at it, just like I’m not very good at every other kind of social interaction. However, I ruminate a lot. I think a lot about my words, running simulations all day long. I always imagine myself showing it to someone.

The other day I let the hand of justice reach out on some old lady on the train. She was BLASTING this video about some silent film star. It was so egregious, I could see everyone around her making some show of annoyance about it. I thought, this is my moment to speak up. I went over to her and told her, “you can’t do this, it’s too loud.” She dismissed me and demanded I go away. Like I was the crazy person. Everyone around ignored me, of course. I couldn’t help but laugh at what I thought was going to happen. Was I expecting a revolution in the car? At least a little bit of support. The worst part was she started speaking to the lady next to her WHO WAS WEARING HEADPHONES, talking about how crazy I was for asking for some common courtesy. But what, I can’t practice some dissent with a nonthreatening old lady being a menace to society? If I can’t do that, how can I stand up to people who actually matter to me, like my friends and family? If you engage, you have to be prepared for it to go wrong. Which it always seems to, for me.

P.S. Demi Lovato is the vocalist of our time. Do NOT argue with me, I will be bad at it/cry.