I AM Lovesick: Thomas Fanboys BlackPink’s “Lovesick Girls”

When BlackPink first released their title track “Lovesick Girls” on October 2, I disliked it a lot. In my initial listens, the chorus felt too shouty and hollow instead of anthemic and resonant. I also tend to turn away from songs that focus on romantic love. About a week and a half later, though, after I listened to some covers of the song on YouTube, the chorus clicked for me and I became obsessed with this bop about the pains and joys of heartache. After listening to “Lovesick Girls” nonstop for about a month and a half now, I realize that I resonate with this song because of the unique way it crafts a somewhat trite message: that it is better to be hurt by love than to close yourself off from experiencing it at all.

To demonstrate the emotional resonance of “Lovesick Girls,” I conducted a mindfulness practice in which I journaled all the emotion words that arose within me while listening to one full run-through of the song. I inputted my results into this word cloud and bam. We love a sad, rebellious, acceptance-based bop!

The verses in “Lovesick Girls” do an excellent job of communicating the pain that accompanies connection.

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Please Live Without Me

In 2019, I fell out love with one of my closest friends, A. I remember a couple of our FaceTime calls during the last few months of our friendship, when she talked about how she and her boyfriend felt unsure about where they would live after she ended her internship year. My friend wanted to move closer to her family down south, whereas her boyfriend wanted to stay closer to his family in the mid-Atlantic region.

“And after we talked I just thought, what if he’s gonna break up with me?” A said to me, after one of those tenser conversations with her boyfriend.

Who the heck cares, I thought to myself, though I said other things to my friend: I’m sure you two will work it out, it sounds like you’ve both been practicing healthy communication, I hope you can take care of yourself through this. Taking a step back, of course I understood why my friend cared about if her boyfriend would break up with her. She had moved to a new state where she knew no one, then she started dating this guy, and he acted as her only in-person support system. Whenever they got into fights, she always asked me: what if he breaks up with me, and I’m all alone in [name of state redacted for confidentiality]?

Deep down though, I expected more from A.

Dreamland

In high school, I dreamed so much about going to college. I identified my top choice university my freshman year and worked my butt off the next four years to get in. I took tons of honors and advanced placement courses, I studied SAT vocab words while running on the treadmill to Lady Gaga and 2NE1, and I talked with my friends all the time about this school. While on one hand I saw college as the next step in my dream to becoming a psychologist, I also viewed it as an escape from my abusive mother. I saw college as a dreamland where I could free myself from her endless shouting and screaming and escape into freedom, into pure bliss.

I got into my dream school. But it turned out that college kinda like, sucked though. I spent my first year and a half in an unfulfilling, borderline-abusive friendship. Then when that friendship ended, post-traumatic stress disorder hit me like a brick. I cried in a lot of bathroom stalls and meditated in the midst of panic attacks in many others. I wanted pure bliss and got a ton of mess instead.

But not all of college sucked.

Thomas Gets His Heart Broken by a Straight Boy, and Other Personal Updates

I met Will at a volunteer orientation at a psychiatric hospital over the summer, and I developed a huge crush on him a few months later. At first I tried to resist my attraction with foolproof strategies, such as by saying “undergraduate men are way too immature for me” over and over while reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or by playing “Focus” by Ariana Grande until I could sing it backwards in my sleep. But my pull toward Will’s deep voice, his listening skills, and his confidence soon forced me to accept my feelings. I talked about him with several of my friends, I penned a creative nonfiction piece about him that I shared with my entire class, and I even wrote a psychoanalysis of my thoughts toward him while sitting next to him in my Developmental Psychology course. I was, unfortunately, in love.

So I planned my heartbreak for 4 p.m. today.

Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Thomas

Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Thomas,

Hi, this is your nineteen-year-old self. How are you? I want to start this letter by saying that, yes, you still write embarrassing super personal blog posts three years from now. You do not write as much on your blog, because college keeps you busy, but you still do. Congratulations: no admissions officers take the time to Google your blog and reject you because of it, so keep writing.

So I guess I will start on the whole college thing: you get in. You really, really do. You get into William and Mary, the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania. All your hard work pays off. Almost three years ago, you wrote this post about optimism, about how you would not let a B- in Physics Honors keep you down. Guess what: not only do you end up with an A- in the class, but you graduate high school and enter the university of your dreams: William & Mary. This might blow your mind, so feel free to take a moment and listen to Lady Gaga (you later get super into Ariana Grande and her song “Break Free,” but that can wait) or read a book.

Even bigger news: you escape your mother. No, not 100%. You still have to go home and see her, you still have to put up with her mood swings over the phone. But for the most part, you leave. You highlight your hair, you wear whatever you want, you study all the subjects you care about, and you have your freedom. At college, you feel the happiest you have ever been.

But I want to tell you some bad news.

Abuse Me, Refuse Me: A Recount of Control

I faced a lot of abuse as a child. To this day, I still feel an ounce of panic when someone raises their voice, and I still flinch when anyone raises their hand, even if just for a high-five. One of my most vivid adolescent memories centers on the first time I saw a friend’s parents interact without shouting. It proved to me that non-dysfunctional families did exist outside of fiction, that some people did get along without hurting one another, and that maybe one day, I would find someone who understood me, too.

I do not want pity for my past, but I do want to talk about how I coped with my abuse: I developed a huge internal locus of control.

How 17-Year-Old Thomas Saved My Life

A little less than three weeks ago, I had a rough day. Memories of J kept pulling me under, even though I knew he never spent a single second thinking about me. After hours of staring at walls and pretending to have my life together, I walked to a dorm in the middle of campus, where for some reason, I started reading my old blog posts. Then, I found this:

The cheesy and heartfelt words of seventeen-year-old me, from my blog post “Things Change.” Dang, time flies.

After reading those words, I ran to a bathroom stall, played the Teen Titans scene from my blog post on repeat, and sobbed for twenty minutes. I felt every tear like a shock of electricity running down my face; as I crouched down on the cold hard tile, my cheek pressing into the cool granite, every nerve in my body sung, as if all my emotions just then ripped through my body. Because reading my old blog post and watching that scene made me remember an important lesson, one that gave me hope: things change.

I loved the old J, the one who cared about me, the one with an honest calm, the friend who worked hard to improve himself.

Thomas 2.0

Dear J,

One month has passed since you ended our friendship. 28 days have gone by since you took my heart and shattered it in your hands, smiling the whole time.

I could write about anger. I have every right to hate you for the horrible way you treated me. This past month has been a whirlwind of emotion, in which some days I sing “Break Free” at the top of my lungs and others in which I spend hours in a dark haze of memory and regret. You hurt me, and though I do not often feel frustration, I still get upset at myself, for trusting you.

But the idea of anger brings me back to a quote from Jane Eyre, in which Jane’s friend Helen says “life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity.” Every second I spend thinking about you means one less thought given to my true friends, to the issues I care about, and the causes I fight for.

The Worst Pain in the World

Last night they slammed a sledgehammer to my heart, and my whole world broke into pieces.

If you do not like personal posts, please do not read this. But if you care about me, please do.

Taylor Swift Redeems Herself With “Ronan”

T-Swift at her peak, holding back tears. I admire her!

I heard “Ronan” two days ago right after returning home from school. After listening to the song for fifteen minutes, I literally had to exit out of ITunes so I could staunch the flow of tears trailing down my face.

Musically, this song is breathtakingly beautiful.