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aromanticbuck · 2 years

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Getting back to you on 2011/high infidelity, feel free to ignore this ask until you feel coherent and in a space to answer 💖💖💖💝💝💝

Okay, this is gonna be maybe bare bones of it? I might let it get away from me. We'll see. I think the "trilogy" of 2011 songs is High Infidelity/Anti-Hero/Labyrinth, with Karma as like... an epilogue? If that makes any sense? Hear me out for a second. Yes, I'm color coding things again. It keeps me sane.

Yes, Anti-Hero is absolutely a Thelma song but it was a Mouse song first so that's a different essay

High Infidelity is like summer of 2011, Mouse coming out to his parents and getting kicked out, that kind of... crash, I guess, of this reality that he was so wrong about them and how they would react. And a part of it kind of ties forward into November, too, but I'll get to that later.

Anti-Hero is September/October 2011, that fear of coming out to Jay because that truth about himself already cost him his parents and that familial relationship he thought was unbreakable, and he can't bear the idea of losing his best friend because of it, too. And that carries us up through brunch.

Labyrinth is such a specific vibe. It's the night of November 14th, 2011, waking up at Med with Jay there and that sudden realization of, oh shit, maybe this isn't just friendship that I feel for him (I could tie Glitch into this moment really easily too, but that's a different essay)

Karma is years later, once Jay and Mouse actually get together. It's the aftermath of everything, and Mouse reflecting back on all the shit he went through and how things worked out so that he's happy now and his parents and their opinions don't matter - the best revenge is living his best life kind of thing.

Yeah, this is gonna get unruly, so I'll put in a read more.

Warnings for: homophobia, drug use/addiction, depression, anxiety, attempted suicide

So High Infidelity really jumps right in it with the feels, here, because the first verse has the lyric blind hoping, you said I was freeloading, I didn't know you were keeping count. And it's that vibe of having the rug ripped out from under him when he came out, he thought he was safe because he had a roof over his head and his parents loved him, and then he's being kicked out with no warning and no support. But that fear has always been there, in the back of his mind, for a decade at that point, because he's known that he's gay since high school, and went along with the pressure he faced from his parents for all that time - that pressure to find a woman and settle down and have kids to pass the family name and money and power to one day. Even if it killed him inside to pretend and keep lying - your picket fence is sharp as knives, I was dancing around it.

There's part of the second verse that really captures his feelings on coming out and the hindsight he gets about that decision - both about coming out and the consequences of it, and keeping it to himself for so long before saying something:

storm coming, good husband, bad omen dragged my feet right down the aisle at the house lonely, good money I'd pay if you'd just know me seemed like the right thing at the time you know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love the slowest way is not loving them enough

And a part of him still believes that his parents did love him, potentially still do, but it wasn't enough. It didn't make up for this major slight in their eyes, and he wasn't worthy of that love anymore, no matter what they might claim. He'd kind of been a failure in their eyes since he dropped out of school anyway, so he was just failing again, in a different way, another reason to add to the pile for why they wanted nothing to do with him, for why he was a miserable son who could have been better for them and the family image if he tried a little harder - high infidelity, put on your records and regret me.

And that brings us right up to Anti-Hero, a song about taking all the blame for everything and struggling to see how someone would find them worthy of love. And that's kind of why I've been thinking of it as a song about his fear about telling Jay and potentially losing his best friend on top of everything he's already lost - I wake up screaming from dreaming one day I'll watch as you're leaving and life will lose all its meaning.

But in hiding that part of himself, he internalizes a lot of the feelings that his parents have made very clear to him. That he's the failure in all of this, that it's his fault his life fell apart the way it did, because of this thing he can't control. And he even lies to Jay about why he moved out, claiming it was his idea because he wanted his own space, and his parents' homophobia and forcing his hand the way they did doesn't even make it into the conversation. It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

It's another thing that's kind of killing him slowly, being so alone and not actually having someone to talk to - I should not be left to my own devices, they come with prices and vices. I end up in crisis. Because he was already struggling so much with his parents' support, and having that taken away definitely made him retreat into himself and rely more on painkillers to cope. And that's another mistake that Mouse makes, another failure for the pile, another reason for everyone to leave, even when Jay doesn't, another burden to put on the people around him. It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero.

And that opinion is reinforced at brunch, when Thelma is correcting every little thing he does even with an audience of Jay and the entire room, when he's outed before he's ready - to his best friend and to everyone else just trying to eat their meals around their table because a scene got made. It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me. at teatime, everybody agrees. He's the reason it's such a big deal, the reason the scene was made in the first place, and him trying to stop it only made it bigger. He's the reason so many people had their days disrupted by his drama that he couldn't control well enough. And that internal blame turns into a downward spiral, which leads us into Labyrinth.

it only feels this raw right now lost in the labyrinth of my mindbreak up, break freebreak through, break down

It's the start of this... arc of sorts. He hits rock bottom because no one was trying to catch him before he got there. But he does start to realize that he can't rely on his parents anymore, and he's assuming he can't reach out to Jay after the truth got out, so he keeps retreating and pulling back from help even when it's offered. He feels so alone, and he was already hitting that breaking point of just not being able to do it anymore, and one bad microwave dinner in an empty, cold apartment when he's behind on rent is just that final straw. So he takes out his bottle of pills and takes the rest of them, and that's supposed to be it. All of the hurt and the disappointment is supposed to be over.

And then he wakes up. In a crappy hospital bed with a thin mattress, and the monitors beeping and wheezing is really annoying, but that's not what he's focusing on. Because Jay is there, half asleep, next to him at rock bottom even if there was no way to catch him in time, and it's the first time he's seen someone make a visible effort to help him beyond offers of free food and criticism in... as long as he can remember. It's the first solid proof he's gotten that someone cares about him in any capacity in months. It's the first thing that he can hold onto that gives him hope, even if it's tiny and dim - I thought the plane was going down. How'd you turn it right around?

It's not perfect, and it's not an immediate recovery from everything he's still trying to process, and nothing will be. As much as this is a Moustead song, at the core, it's perfect for this moment of the beginning of his recovery, even if it's going to be long and the trauma his parents put him through might never stop affecting him. I'll be getting over you my whole life.

But his overdose is definitely the moment he realizes how much Jay means to him. Because yes, he was already Mouse's best friend, and that loss would have hurt so much, but now it's elevated, a little bit. Whether it's because the feelings are genuine and have been lingering there for a while or because Jay actively saved his life (again) and he feels that debt, the effect is the same:

you would break your back to make me break a smile you know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back just like that uh oh, I'm falling in love oh no, I'm falling in love again

Those feelings are there, and he doesn't know what to do about them. He can't act on them. He can't ignore them forever. But one thing is certain in all of it - he's alive, and breathing, and it's all because of Jay, not his parents or even his own force of will. His parents' love, or what they claimed was love, was killing him, and the love of his best friend brought him back. And that all ties back together with High Infidelity, too:

you know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love the slowest way is never loving them enough do you really wanna know where I was April 29th? do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to life?

And then we have to do this major jump forward for Karma. Because Labyrinth is just the start of Mouse recovering from everything his parents did, and Karma is the very end of that arc.

It's when he finally gets to that point of being happy with is life despite how hard he hit rock bottom. Because he still has his best friend there with him, and hasn't spoken to the people who hurt him the most in years, and everything is okay. He got his happy ending despite them, not because of them. He got what he deserves, not what his parents thought he deserved, and it's especially satisfying that it goes against everything they actually wanted for him:

karma is my boyfriend karma is a god karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend karma's a relaxing thought aren't you envious that for you it's not?

ask me what I learned from all those years ask me what I earned from all those tears ask me why so many fade when I'm still here

He earned his happy ending, dammit. He went through so much and he deserves a reward for making it as far as he did. And he gets it. And it's so satisfying just to come out the other side of everything in one piece.

#answered #shae tag #lovelymysticmoon #alex says things #greg mouse gerwitz #mouse gerwitz #greg gerwitz #cpd #chicago pd #one chicago #mouse backstory*#i have way too many thoughts about this album #it dropped less than 24 hours ago #have an almost 2k essay about it

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