Vertigo

"Are we better off believing What the ignorance suggests? I wish living life was easy (life was easy, yeah) But mine has been a mess They say it comes with the seasons, mhm But the seasons comes and go, they go I go blurry when I'm thinking Is it me or vertigo?"

-"Vertigo"by Khalid

It's winter in Columbia. The beautiful lush, snow blankets all that it touches. The ever picturesque Francis Quad instantly turns into something magical, unreal at times. Everything, whether it be bushes or roofs, have this certain hue to them, they appear softer, lighter and filled with wonder. However, after a while, the snow starts to morph into something else: ice. Something so beautiful becomes menacing...scary over night. Instead of hearing a soft crunch like snow, you hear nothing. Just silence.

A feeling of uneasiness washes over you each time you walk. How many times I have fallen on the ice is honestly way too many to count. When I walk by my favorite place, I have to pass a section of sidewalk where I fell backpack in hand. I remember stumbling into Uprise bleeding from my hand, looking at it as if something like this wasn't supposed to happen. I didn't realize that in falling I could get hurt, for some weird reason that was a foreign concept to me. Much like how I feel about the snow, this time also represents the most trying times in my life. At the time I fell, I was at the beginning one of the darkest points in my life. However, only with the gift of hindsight I know that.

I explain all this because I am scared it's happening again. I feel like I am falling into all the old patterns; the same ones that plagued me before. There are days where it is hard to get out of bed, even though I have so much to get up for. I am surrounded by beautiful people, yet the ones that inflicted pain onto me still haunt me like ghosts as I walk around the city. Mental health isn't linear, I know that. But right now, I want it to be. What I wouldn't give to have it this way.

As I walked across the ice tundra that is Columbia this past Tuesday, a soft hum of violins filled my ears. It put my mind at ease and the landscape transformed into a vivid landscape. Since it had recently snowed, beginnings of sidewalks blurred into the street. Lines weren't defined. Slowly, everyone walking around me seemed to disappear at 4:30 p.m. and it was just me, alone walking around downtown.

Khalid's LP "Suncity" is a follow up to his critical acclaimed debut album "American Teen" which came out in 2017.

"Vertigo" by Khalid drew me in the first time i heard it. I was taken by his angelic voice. It is hard to believe the El Paso native is only 20 years old. His voice is filled with so much soul. He is the only one that understands me in that moment. He knows what I am going through.

" I've been better off than broken I’ve been battered, I've been beat I wish I was more outspoken But the words are out of reach"

This block of lyrics is what got me through that Tuesday night. Each word was something I had felt at least once this past month. I was wanting and wishing for things to be better, yet I had felt battered. Too battered, to reach those desires. I felt so lost even though I was looking at a map that told me the directions I could possibly take. All I could do to remedy this pain was to let it out. I cried until I couldn't do it anymore. Until I forgot about the people who had created this gaping hole. The crying cleared it out, exposing the wound for what it was.

As the song concludes, with three lines repeating, over and over again:

"Eyes closed, eyes closed I've been falling with my Eyes low, eyes low"

For a while, I was too scared and depressed to confront these demons that were rearing their ugly head again. Shame played a key part in it of not being able to "fix" the problems at the time they were at their worst. I would beat myself up that certain things would strip away my happiness. I was falling with my eyes closed, resigned in the fact that I couldn't do anything about my certain situation. But that shouldn't be (and shouldn't have been) the case. I should have opened my eyes, taking it in fully. Because without it, I would be too resigned in it completely, and fully. I would stay stagnate forever.

Vertigo at its very definition is a loss of balance and a sensation of whirling. In this song, we are caught in this feeling with Khalid. His lyrics put us in the mind of an individual that is trying to regain his senses again but is floating and floating away. In that moment, I was floating along side him and like him I wanted to regain that sense of balance again.