I’ve been listening to Little Earthquakes on repeat for a few weeks now. The whole album. In order. Without the later bonus content that appeared with various reissues, like someone decided the perfect thing needed to be longer.

This is unusual for me in two ways, and I was about to explain both of them when I realized I had the second one completely wrong. Which is fine. The wrong version turned out to be more interesting anyway.

First: I am a single song repeat person. I have always been. Before CDs I would make what can only be described as a demented mix tape — just me recording the same song onto a cassette as many times as it would fit. The compact disc was not the origin of this behavior. It was just the moment it became easy. The ability to go back to the beginning at the push of a button… I have never once taken that for granted. Many past friends, roommates, and anyone who spent significant time around me probably wish I had.

I branch out sometimes. I have a playlist called, without irony, Songs to Listen to on Repeat. I scroll through until one grabs me. Then I play it into the ground.

But an album? Start to finish? The whole thing every time? That’s not as common. It’s reserved for Primus Frizzle Fry and every REM Album ever.

The second reason — the wrong one — I was going to tell you it’s strange because it’s one of my magic repeat albums from the past, and I don’t go back to those once I’ve gotten them out of my head. But that’s the biggest moment of being wrong I hope I have today, and it’s 4:38am.

I’m writing this from bed, curled on my side, cylindrical pillow tucked under my head, hands and right knee in the exact position I always end up in when I’m writing to you at this hour.

When I can’t sleep on the going-to-bed side of things I go write on the lounge daybed sofa thing that no one likes but me. Okay, James the girl might not mind it so much. Sometimes I want to make a list of everyone who’s encountered that daybed. I’d limit it to people who’ve actually used it, but when Tam comes over, it’s kind of fun to watch her float right past it toward the part of the house where nothing is upholstered in dead cow.

I digress.

The wrong second reason turned out to be the real thing. What I keep circling without landing is this: I don’t normally source songs to fixate on from my darkest times. I go back to summers, heartbreaks, good years… not to the years that were just a lot.

The album came out in 1992. I was fifteen.

When I found it I found an entire world of music I hadn’t been listening to. Women’s voices, mostly. I wasn’t listening to many of those. Internalized sexism and homophobia, I’m quite sure — which as a queer woman is its own thing that could stand a turn in therapy someday. I’m working on it. There are more immediately pressing items on that particular list.

I digress again.

I felt everything at fifteen. I wrote long dark poetry soaked in blood I’d never seen but that my brain couldn’t stop showing me. Pain I had absorbed and processed and was sometimes 72% worse than it needed to be, though I didn’t understand any of it. Except I did. I was fifteen and I already had the names and the depth to know the world was deeply unkind to women.

The album gave language to things I was already feeling. Bold piano. Striking vocals. Everything technically wrong in the best possible way. The most perfect little cover for the most perfect little collection of songs in exactly the right order.

What I’m dancing around — because I don’t want to say it this time — is that I kind of feel like I did then.

Fifteen-year-old me had no idea who she was. But she’d found the parameters she could be perceived in comfortably. All black clothes. Great boots. Dark heavy writing she tried to deliver like Rainbow Brite the morning after a migraine, when she’s really fucking over all of the colors being in her face.

I’m currently operating under the personal delusion that Rainbow Brite wears rainbows for exactly the same reason I wear all black. Decision fatigue.

I’m more flexible as an adult. I’ve made peace with jeans across a spectrum of color saturation I can now read as neutral and pair with anything. Progress.

I wanted to tell you the thing. I keep almost getting there. The ten seconds of song that’s been on repeat in my head for weeks… I can hear her hit every note like she’s in the room. I thought that was it. But it turns out that’s just how I know what’s stuck — it happens all the time.

When I finally reached for the words I wanted, I landed somewhere else entirely. A different song on the album. Equally painful. Differently traumatized and traumatizing.

I was about to tell you how deeply the words resonated with me. How I’m discovering who I really am all over again, just like I was then.

But I’ve lost the thread again.

Maybe if I close my eyes I can fall asleep long enough for it to feel like a reasonable time to be out of bed on a Sunday morning.