Letters I Can't Send: Volume 2

To the aux cord in my the glove compartment,

I'm sorry for replacing you. I wish I never did. I was just a kid in high school. I didn't know any better. At that age, novelty always seems to supersede the status quo and bluetooth was no exception. But I've grown up and I've learned that “new” isn't always better.

Bluetooth… it was sterile – too crisp, too clean. You, you had a charm about you, a depth to you. And though I resented you for it at one point, I love the way you accented my favorite songs with crackly static. And since the day I put you in my glove compartment, the soundtrack to my life hasn't been the same.

In the years we've been apart, I've felt so much and nothing, so I made playlists for everything. I curated collections of songs for every mood and experience and I played them over bluetooth. I listened and listened and listened, trying to feel something, anything. I wanted my feelings to be validated. But nothing. I continued listening anyway.

It went on like that for a while, the playlists and the listening and the bluetooth. And then I thought of you...our drives down that two-lane road...how the music and static and midnight wind had something intrinsic to it, something that made me feel, rather than something that told me how to feel. I wasn't trying to be anything more than myself in those moments and neither were you.

That's when I decided to write you this letter. I realized I was in search of what something “should” sound like, not of what it actually does. I was busy crafting a version of myself to match the idea of what I thought a man should be – buff, cool, emotionless – which I sure as HELL ain't. Sure I workout and watch football and appear seemingly normal, but I'm not jacked and I'm no walking NFL encyclopedia and I get excited about weird things like Fat Bear Week, burrata, and Taylor Swift. I sterilized my true identity, just like bluetooth sterilized my favorite songs – the ones I played again and again in hopes of feeling what I felt with you. It was never bluetooth's fault, it was mine for not listening to the music the way it was supposed to be heard. Now, I know better. There's beauty in what simply is.

Digging through spare napkins and straws to find you,

The Monochrome Man