A Fiona Apple Guide to Letting Go
Graphic by James Gocke
The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.
In the past three years, I’ve developed an uneasiness towards marriage. Based on statistics, a fear like mine isn’t irrational. And there’s nothing wrong with not getting married. But my anxiety stems from trauma in early relationships. As an only child, my friends were like magic to me. Throughout childhood, I entertained myself with my imagination. When I made friends in school, I felt lucky people besides my relatives understood me. Now that I had more than fantasy, I sought never to lose those bonds. I met my friend, Anthony* in the 7th grade. He was as vibrant as all of my daydreams combined. We made each other laugh, and our friendship burgeoned. When high school started, he grew destructive and faced threats of expulsion. Until Fiona Apple, I was desperate to remain valuable to him. Listening to Apple’s music taught me to value myself more.
Anthony exuded the confidence I wanted. Anything he said was guaranteed to amuse people. I never spoke without thinking, and hesitation tempered all of my honest thoughts. Anthony became an ideal for me. He embodied the impulsivity I struggled to exercise. Soon, I realized Anthony’s personality was more of a guise. I saw him in the early mornings and after five drinks. When he wasn’t playing the class clown, he had a brooding demeanor. He experimented with drugs and alcohol, unheard of in his Christian family. As his friend, I felt myself becoming obsolete. In “Never is A Promise,” Apple writes about feeling overshadowed by her partner. She sings “I'll never glow the way that you glow / Your presence dominates the judgments made on you.” Anthony was an upper-middle-class, white boy and often escaped the consequences of his lifestyle. Lying to his parents was easy, but fooling his friends took skill. Thankfully, he excelled at manipulation. He downplayed the severity of his addiction to those who might confront him. Amid the secrecy, he withdrew from people like me.
I refused to lose Anthony. Through the lying, I struggled to disassociate him with the boy I met in middle school. When I listened to Apple’s ballads, I noticed they spoke less about love and more about resignation or miscommunication. These concepts defined my relationship with Anthony. I started to feel anxious around him. He had developed a habit of commenting on my appearance. Knowing my insecurities, he would taunt me about my hair and skin, yet, I viewed him with compassion. He had no reason to act cruel, so I figured his insults must be true. In “Limp,” Apple expresses similar confusion: “when I think of it, my fingers turn to fists. / I never did anything to you, man.” Apple’s accounts resonated with my own frustration. Her writing confirmed what I had intuited about Anthony. In the next line of “Limp,” she states “but no matter what I try, you'll beat me with your bitter lies.” Because of Anthony’s gaslighting, it took years for me to recognize the emotional abuse. He would “forget” events or dismiss me as oversensitive. One day, in class, he wrote a note to me on a sheet of notebook paper. The words read “I’m hard on you because I know what you’re capable of.” Looking back, the note sounded ludicrous. We were eighteen; even I didn’t know what I was capable of.
When I thought about Anthony, Apple’s words formed on my lips. Every day, I repressed my feelings to appease him. Listening to Apple’s dusky voice in my room at night gave me chills. In “Get Gone,” she sings “How many times can it escalate / Till it elevates to a place I can't breathe?” Hearing these lines, my stomach flipped. I recalled escalating moments with Anthony. Sophomore year of high school, we had to perform a scene for theatre class. For five minutes, we sat staring at each other, too angry to speak. Afterward, he acted smug. He liked the attention from classmates. My rage made me feel sick. I remembered another time when my boyfriend told me Anthony groped him when they were alone. But four years later, as freshmen in college, Anthony and I were still friends.
Apple’s music gave me an understanding of how power and insecurity work in relationships. At the time, I would have never suspected that my friendship with Anthony would lead to trauma. In “Love Ridden,” Apple speaks about a disjointed romance: “I stood too long in the way of the door / And now I'm giving up on / You”. To end the relationship, I needed to stop idealizing Anthony. Reflecting on Apple’s pain made me feel more comfortable vocalizing my own. In a 1997 interview, Apple remarked “my strength is in my honesty.” Apple’s honesty unlocked my self-confidence. I believed I deserved more than what Anthony provided. No happy memory could ease the fallout of his devastation. Apple’s music didn’t resolve the trauma, but it did lead me to end the friendship. In the same interview, Apple explains “I think it’s only right that I go through things in an intense way, so that when I express them—and I will—that there’s things to be expressed.” Now that I’ve grown out of Anthony, I can do the same.
*Name changed to protect individual’s privacy.