A Story of Survival
There’s this line from Niki’s “Backburner” that haunts me: “maybe life’s less romantic when I don’t wanna die.” I keep turning it over in my mind like a smooth stone, feeling its weight, its contradiction. You’d think life would sparkle more when you’re not imagining who’d show up to your funeral at 2 AM, right? When you’re not cataloging potential mourners like a morbid party planner?
There’s this line from Niki’s “Backburner” that haunts me: “maybe life’s less romantic when I don’t wanna die.” I keep turning it over in my mind like a smooth stone, feeling its weight, its contradiction. You’d think life would sparkle more when you’re not imagining who’d show up to your funeral at 2 AM, right? When you’re not cataloging potential mourners like a morbid party planner?
Do I want to die? Yeah. Do I think about it every day? Not exactly.
But my wounds are like cheap zippers — always catching, always breaking open. The stitches pop. The staples rust and fall. So I do what any reasonable person would do: I romanticize the hell out of my pain. I turn my struggles into indie movie moments, my tears into aesthetic rain drops. I’ve gotten so good at repackaging my darkness into something beautiful that sometimes I forget it’s not supposed to be beautiful at all.
Here’s the thing about forced optimism — it’s like emotional PhotoShop. I’ve become an expert at filtering my trauma through rose-colored Instagram presets. And you know what? Sometimes it works better than therapy. I’ve learned to wrestle with my shadows, to dance with my demons, to find poetry in my pain. But God, I’m exhausted from trying so hard.
I wonder what it feels like to just… be okay. To look at a cloudy sky and think “bad weather” instead of “pathetic fallacy.” To have a bad day without turning it into a metaphor for existence. To not need every moment to mean something more.
Imagine having enough good days that the bad ones become footnotes instead of chapters. Imagine being able to say “today sucks” without feeling like you’re confessing to a crime. Imagine making mistakes without feeling like they’re adding to your tragic backstory.
So yeah, maybe Niki’s right. Maybe life is less romantic when you don’t want to die. Maybe it’s more mundane, more regular, more… livable.
But here’s what I know: I’m still here. My over-romanticization, my emotional Instagram filters, my metaphor-making machine of a brain — they’ve kept me alive. Sometimes authenticity is a luxury we can’t afford. Sometimes we need to fake it until we almost make it. Your forced smile today? That’s a victory. Your deliberately aesthetic coffee photo that hides the fact you barely got out of bed? That’s survival.
One day, life might be less romantic. One day, it might just be… fine. And that’s okay. But until then, I’ll keep turning my pain into poetry if that’s what keeps me breathing. I’ll keep finding beauty in the breakdown if that’s what keeps me here.
Because maybe life’s less romantic when you don’t want to die, but I’m not ready for that kind of mundane magic just yet. For now, I’ll stay here in my over-romanticized world, where even my darkest thoughts wear fairy lights.
We keep telling ourselves “life will make sense soon” like a mantra, like a prayer. And maybe one day, it finally will. Until then, we’ll keep making art out of our agony, finding constellations in our chaos.
For those still writing their story in metaphors: your survival doesn’t need to be beautiful to be valid.