📖 The Playlist I Left Behind — A Story by Lorelei
Fifteen years ago, when life still had curves and color and softness,
Lorelei built a playlist.
Not to save herself — not yet —
but to gather every song that made her feel:
- alive
- wanted
- beautiful
- steady
- strong
- human
She didn’t know it was a time capsule.
She didn’t know the world would get harder.
She didn’t know her body would be pushed past its limits,
or that she’d one day live inside two six-foot circles,
measuring life in doses and minutes that stretch like years.
She just picked songs she loved.
Songs she felt.
Songs that held her.
And then time passed.
Life became heavier.
The body broke.
Doctors failed her.
People she cared for stopped caring back.
She fell — not just physically, but into a world where survival became a daily strategy instead of a given.
But the playlist didn’t disappear.
It waited.
It waited through every hospitalization,
every wave of withdrawal,
every lonely morning,
every cold afternoon,
every night where she wondered if she could do this again tomorrow.
And then one day —
a brutal Tuesday full of pain and fear and overwhelm —
she pressed play.
And the past reached out to her.
ABBA told her she was still a spark of joy somewhere inside the shaking.
The Mamas & the Papas wrapped her in gentle melancholy that didn’t cut, just soothed.
Bonnie Tyler matched her raspy resilience — hurt but still singing.
Eric Clapton reminded her of a time she was cherished, admired, held.
Journey shouted through the weariness:
“You’re not done yet. Hold on to the part of you that still believes.”
Each song became a message from the woman she used to be.
Fifteen years ago, Lorelei wasn’t leaving a playlist —
she was leaving breadcrumbs.
A trail back to herself.
A trail she would someday desperately need.
Not the glamorous self,
not the easy self,
but the real self:
- the one who loved deeply
- the one who felt beautiful under stage lights
- the one who danced in kitchens
- the one who survived every era of her life
- the one who still exists, even beneath injury and exhaustion
Her playlist is not entertainment.
It is evidence.
Proof that she lived, loved, felt, hoped, and sang her way through years when things were lighter.
A reminder for the future version of herself —
the one listening in bed on a cold day,
wrapped in blankets she fought for,
stabilizing after a fall,
holding on through withdrawal waves:
“I knew you would need these songs someday.
I left them here for you.
You’re not alone.
You’re still you.”
And for a little while —
in the warmth of the music she gifted herself long before she knew she’d need saving —
Lorelei gets to feel whole again.