I sometimes think I’d like to make art that people connect with so deeply that if I got engaged, they’d feel a sense of loss. But then I remember that’s insane and nobody should want that. 

Matty Healy, front man of the band The 1975,  is engaged. I don’t think you understand what that means to me–I don’t think I understand what that means to me. 

It’s funny, the things we hold on to. Eight years ago, when I was 19, I left treatment (a kind of mental health rehab) early one night to see The 1975 perform in what used to be a church. It was a small crowd–I went with a close friend I’d made in treatment. This memory is one of the most important that I have, and one of the first things I ever wrote about in earnest. You can scroll all the way back in my posts to read about it but I’ll sum it up here to save you from truly horrendous, adolescent writing:

Until that night, I’d never felt happier.

I could research and spew back at you why we form parasocial relationships and why they’re harmful and why young women specifically are targeted with judgment around them. But instead, I’ll just say that before we–women–are able to love ourselves, we often love something else. 8 years ago I hated myself something fierce and 8 years ago The 1975 was that something else for me.

By the way, before the tik tok virality and the Taylor Swift thing, they were actually very cool so, reserve your judgment. 

So I sit here, getting reliably drunk off Josh brand wine, thinking about the ten years I spent loving The 1975. I saw them perform this past year at Bridgestone Arena and it was so, profoundly strange. This band I had seen play a half empty theater was now playing an arena where people were pressed so closely to my back I could hardly breathe. 

It is uniquely terrible to watch the people who bullied you in high school love the thing you love. 

I went to the show alone–hiding my love of this band from those who knew me best–and had a truly fantastic time despite the back pressers. 

Anyway–why does Matty Healy being engaged to the hottest woman I’ve ever seen matter to me? I don’t know. I think because the love you give to something that isn’t real, you never really get back. And like, rightly so. It’s just a bit of an energy imbalance that you gotta correct for. 

This happens in my real life too–not just my parasocial fantasies. A friend of mine recently put it succinctly, “You find everyone interesting.” 

Though I highly doubt this is true and am the last person to give myself what could be construed as a compliment, I do think it makes sense given my track record. Give me a five minute conversation with you in a bar and I will build you into a God in my mind. It’s something I’m working on because it makes me ripe for the advantage taking. 

And before you say, “Allison, celebrities are just distractions from the realities of our dying world and the oppression dealt to us all by the ruling elite!” allow me to say, girl, I know. 

I, as a rule, do not worship celebrity. I do not follow celebrities on social media, I do not–to the best of my ability–emulate them. I do not propagate celebrity as reality. I do, however, have deep, emotional roots in bands, and I think that’s pretty normal. If it’s not, please baby– lie to me. 

Oh well. Matty Healy is engaged to a model and I am drinking $10 wine and writing about it. I think that’s exactly what he’d want.

 
It feels like I lost a friend and I don’t really know why. My best guess is that some small part of me who resists loving myself is still 19–still skipping out on treatment to drive to the show. Is still holding her breath in that church turned venue.

oh well! It’s as unimportant as it is useless to feel anything about. But still. We gotta hold on to something.

xx

al