Sometime during the reign of Ye Olde Olde Blog, I wrote something about how this time of year always makes me feel lonely.  Not sad, really, or depressed in a seasonally-affected way, but lonely.  I’m not certain, but I think it has something to do with the fact that every time I experienced either a difficult breakup or a frustrating relationship, it was when it started getting cold, damp, and dark outside.  That’s a pretty melodramatic explanation and I’m not especially proud of letting boys I don’t even know anymore affect my mood every winter for years to come, but it’s what I’ve got.

I have no reason to feel lonely this year.  I still have all of the friends who matter, everyone’s alive, and Graham and I are fine.  Aside from not owning a house yet, everything I can think of at the moment is either okay or tolerable.  I’m not actually lonely.  I’m not, yet when I’m driving home from work and it’s a purplish dark out and it’s been raining so there’s red neon reflections all over the street, I feel this quiet uneasiness in my chest and wonder if it would be acceptable for a 28-year-old woman to go home and cry for no reason at all.  Especially if said woman isn’t even sad, she just has the freedom and privacy to make that kind of behavior possible in her own apartment.

If my life were an eighties movie, I wouldn’t go home and cry.  I’d put on a ripped sweatsuit, dig up a synthesizer record, and get crazy cleaning my house, dancing like a maniac and high on Comet fumes.  And then young Rob Lowe and young Val Kilmer would fight over who gets to date me.

Heh.  Well.  Sorry.

My life is not an eighties movie.  I don’t even go home and cry for real, and if I did own a sweatsuit, I certainly wouldn’t throw away my money by razoring it all up.  Obviously I don’t own any synthesizer records or clean my house, either, so this winter, I think I’ll just play these songs on repeat in between Netflixed episodes of Futurama.

This Is the Winter Where I Won’t Feel So Lonely

Girl, Beck
That’s When I Reach For My Revolver, Moby
Sweatmother, TOBACCO
The Hard Way, The Kinks
Get Some, Lykke Li
Tell ‘Em, Sleigh Bells
Ladykillers, Lush
Mambo Sun, T. Rex
Soft In the Center, The Hold Steady
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, The Smiths
Joey, Concrete Blonde
Waiting For You, The Brothers Lazaroff
Gun, Uncle Tupelo
She’s My Baby, Jaill
I Hope, I Think, I Know, Oasis
She’s Like Heroin To Me, The Gun Club
Pawn Shoppe Heart, The Von Bondies
Redondo Beach, Patti Smith
Jeepster, T. Rex
Leave Me Be, The Zombies
Willing To Wait, Sebadoh
It’s a Motherfucker, Eels
Stratford-On-Guy, Liz Phair
Dreamworld, Rilo Kiley
Cool As Kim Deal, The Dandy Warhols
God Only Knows, The Beach Boys
Shake Some Action, Jenny Dee and the Deelinquents
Champaign, Illinois, The Old 97’s
Do You Love Me?, Guster

Also there’s this…