How These Songs Helped Me Cope with a Failed Relationship

Being an avid consumer of movies and music, the doomed romance trope was only something I’ve watched in romantic Asian films like Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love”—so much so that the possibility of it happening to me never crossed my mind. But fate is unpredictable, isn’t it? We even met on the same day I lit up a singular wishing candle in Quiapo for good graces. Then, as I was digging for shared interests between us to break the ice, music quickly became a staple in our day-to-day conversations.

I’ve always branded myself as an indie kid. I always found myself drawn to smaller local artists, paying little to no attention towards the existence of mainstream music. You knew that—because I endlessly pestered you with my self-proclaimed elite music taste. Today, your musical interests and fondness of OPM bleeds through to my playlists containing songs by popular Pinoy bands that sing for the romantic masses. At this point, my top artist for this year’s Spotify Wrapped could either be Up Dharma Down or BINI.

I stanned BINI harder because you have loved them since debut—a good chunk of our conversations were probably about them. Even to this day, I still see remnants of you in your favorite member Colet, and while I continue to explore their music, I can see why you love her so much. Well, I don’t personally know her, but you two radiate so much of the same energy, and it’s what I loved the most about you: You were straightforward and never afraid to be honest as much as you could. You were tactless and never sugarcoated your feelings. That’s why whenever you showed me hints that you somehow liked me too, I leaned onto the idea that they were true.

We both knew from the beginning that this relationship—or whatever we had—had no endgame in sight. I was overbearing and you were avoidant. I live in the heart of this country, and you live further up north, kilometers away from me. We both had our own priorities, goals and dreams, naturally so. We were mere students trying to survive college, but we were also adults in our 20s trying to figure out what the fuck life’s all about.

When you left, I have done nothing but try to fill the void of your absence from my life and bask in the rain of emotions that came. And guess what was at the crime scene every time I wept myself into numbness—the tracks we used to listen to together, the artists we recommended to each other, and the songs on which my memory of you was stamped because I dedicated them to you. Suddenly, UDD’s “Crying Season” was on repeat, and present in almost every single one of the playlists I made as I tried to cope.

“You never gave us chance to really try / And worse, I really stood behind you,” UDD’s former frontman, Armi Millare, croons over some semi-sad guitars and a mid-tempo beat. We used to debate what their best song was and I teased you for your easy choice, “Unti-Unti”. Meanwhile, I indecisively switched between underrated gems like “Anino” and “Indak”. You even explained to me that “Unti-Unti” was Armi singing about the phases of a doomed romance—completely oblivious that its lyrics were foreshadowing our predicament.

By the time our painfully unsuccessful attempt at romance ran its course, I had only realized how everything was as fast as the strike of a crisp beat on a snare drum. For months, I wasn’t able to listen to BINI’s “Huwag Muna Tayong Umuwi” the same way as before without a heavy sting in my chest. What’s supposed to be the best ballad in their discography about not wanting to leave your beloved’s side became my desperate bargain for you to stay. Eggboy’s “Iisa Lang Ang Ating Mundo” had also taken some gloomy significance upon your departure—and even Ang Bandang Shirley’s “Glacier,” or Cup of Joe’s “Estranghero,” for that matter.

I was also stuck pondering what could’ve been if only we weren’t given the circumstances we dealt with. “Bawat Piyesa” is always a guaranteed tearjerker as TONEEJAY pleads, “Dito ka na lang habambuhay.” For some time, it was a song I had dreaded to revisit because of how identically it mirrored my yearning for your presence, for every piece of you. It destroyed me every time he cried out, “Anong gagawin kung wala ka?” in its soaring bridge. Still, I had to face my own self-pity, regrets, and loneliness even though I never liked them, because I have always scorned my own vulnerability.

At the same time, the emptiness of your absence was a feeling that can only be described by songs like Orange & Lemons’ “Heaven Knows (This Angel Has Flown),” and 6cyclemind’s “Upside Down.” To this day, I can still faintly hear your voice in my mind when you were singing along to “Upside Down” the night you played it because you wanted me to hear it.

Now, nobody around me understands what these songs mean to me, or what bands like Cup of Joe or UDD mean to me because of you. Not that they need to—but I rue the days I won’t be able to tell you about how “Indak” makes a good companion track to Peryodiko’s “Tayo Lang Ang May Alam”—and how both songs make me want to pick up every piece of you that I find in music, thinking that if I searched hard enough, I might be able to keep the whole you again.

Deep down, I also know that is never going to happen. Heartbreaks are such a mischievous thing—because grieving is never a linear and quick process. At one point, I felt like I was making no progress. There were sleepless nights where my heart would pound so fast due to a rush of various emotions I couldn’t name. There were also slow days where the lyrics of Oh, Flamingo!’s “Four Corners” would feel especially pronounced, allowing me to physically feel just how big the room was because I was alone—how vast my world is without you in it.

When you told me in September that you’re already going steady with someone else, I expected the worst to come for me, however, I only felt lighter, and ironically, somehow at peace. I found comfort knowing that you’re happy and doing well after the past few months had been tumultuous for the both of us. I asked myself if this is love. I never admitted it to you, and it was only after we formally ended and exchanged well wishes that I had gained the courage to tell you,

“Mahal kita palagi.”

It was also in dreamy tracks like “you, always” by angelo shinohara that I felt at ease having you in my heart even though we don’t speak to each other anymore. It ties well with unikko ijo’s “kung ‘di ako” and Megumi Acorda’s “I’ll Get By”. She declares with poignant acceptance of loss, “I’ll survive, but it wouldn’t be a beautiful life without you.”

The night’s longer than I expected and the path still stretches far for me. Sometimes I contemplate if listening to songs that remind me of you is the optimal solution for me. Thoughts of forgetting you even float in the back of my mind, instigated by the fuzzy beats of Rusty Machines’ “Forget You”. It would be the easiest way out—but to do that would be an insult to the parts of us that we gave each other.

I was one to always go against the grain; set myself apart from others to make myself more interesting, but you stripped all that down. You appreciated me in all my normalcy, and loved all those parts of me that I tried so hard to reinvent because I was unhappy with myself. As Megumi also sings in “Ghost”: “No one knows me like you know me / I exist to nobody but you.”

Call me the biggest liar in the world if I said I do not crave that kind of affection—the one you made me feel. It would be poetic, for all intents and purposes, if I wrapped this playlist with Cup of Joe’s “Alas Dose,” the first song we ever heard together. It’s a bittersweet ballad about longing for someone on Christmas day.

However, part of my healing also requires me to slowly learn that life goes on even without that love, even without you. “Hindi ko naman yata ikamamatay / Kung hindi ko mahawakan ang iyong kamay,” Iego Tan, who is also known as Shirebound & Busking, declares in “Waltz of Four Left Feet”.

After all, it’s not the end. The world didn’t end when we stopped listening to the same melody.

Jennel Christopher Mariano is a feature writer and graphic artist for 4079 Magazine. He is a 3rd-year journalism student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. At a young age, he already took interest in the field, taking journalism classes since Grade 5. He also served as editor-in-chief of The Buds and The Blue and White, the official English campus papers of Andres Bonifacio Elementary School and Ramon Magsaysay High School, respectively. Currently, he is also a feature writer and copy editor for The Communicator, official student publication of the PUP College of Communication, using his experience in the field to help produce stories that spotlight important issues within the community and the country.