Rilo Kiley/My Slumbering Heart
Remember writing five paragraph essay for AP classes? There was a rubric, you know. I heard about the rubric every day for four years in Catholic prep school. Opening paragraph with a thesis, three supporting paragraphs, and then your conclusion. My papers were riddled with red pen markings when I first attempted writing these essays, as my content was solid but the form escaped me time and again as I just attempted to write. I listened to this song the other day and thought of these essays as I realized that this song, which I have loved for years and years, basically describes some of the most serious romantic relationships I’ve had. I have an urge to write an actual five paragraph essay, the way I did when I analyzed Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect by the Decemberists for AP Language & Composition but I’ll keep it short. This may have just been my first paragraph of this essay.
My one real girlfriend loved softball. Yes, she really did and yes, she played softball. She took me to the batting cages a few times and all I could think of was Clueless and that line about balls flying at your face as I stood awkwardly holding a bat and praying to God that nothing would hit the nose my dad had to partially pay to fix three years before. There was this and there were organized softball games with some of her lesbian friends on hot afternoons. I usually sat in the stands to be supportive but one day I did play. I think of the background beep of this song as I felt my heart thumping in my ears, the bat heavier than I expected it to be. The sun was warm on my shoulders and I joked to the catcher that I wasn’t very good. To my shock, I hit a double. I looked at my girlfriend from second base and shrugged, grinning only as I looked down at the ground. This was not me but this is who I was with her. There was nothing right about it except that I learned what I didn’t want.
I used to go to the mountains almost every weekend with my ex-boyfriend, driving eight, ten hours at a time to hike and camp. We fought all the way to the mountain, all the way up the mountain, all the way down it. I have this specific memory of both of us having grass stains on our jeans as we went higher and higher, the air thinner than it ever was at sea level. He rushed me as I took photos, wanting to keep moving, not understanding why I wanted to remember everything about this place. I didn’t want one picture of him though, even then. We were always rushing and I knew that I was trying to make it through 18, through 19, and to a time when I didn’t feel the need to be with someone who made me feel like shit all the time. I knew it would end even if I couldn’t end it. The mountains were so much more beautiful than anything I could have felt for him, or ever did feel. Again, I couldn’t figure out what right was but I knew what wrong felt like.
And you, now, in my dreams I do see you sleeping in twin bed, the covers pulled up over your head when I’m not there (how did they know about the little bed?) and while I still don’t know a lot, I know what is right and how it feels to be understood, and to feel good waking up to you, and to feel good next to you, and to feel good coming home to you. That’s what my slumbering heart was, it was sleeping for years waiting for the moment when it would wake up. And I’m awake now but it could be that I’m asleep in a lot of respects but that heart is awake now and everything else will follow.
So when Blake screams, “My slumbering heart!”, it’s a cry for so much feeling that you’re not even aware you’re possible of. I slept and slept and slept and now it’s like everything inside me is screaming just like that, every day. And if someone else can’t hear it, I can and you can, and maybe they’re just not awake yet. Shit. It’s not even until you wake up that you even realize you were asleep for so long.
