Stories of Songs: Renovate My Life

This second story is also inspired by a couple of lines from an MLTR song, Renovate My Life, from the same album as before, Scandinavia. I took it out of context, though, so it isn't at all related to the song!

The aforementioned song is also a very fascinating one, in which a house is used as a metaphor for the speaker's life--but I'm not here to analyse the lyrics. All I'd like to say for now is: I find that the new album brings us to a new level in MLTR's songwriting, particularly as symbols and metaphors are used in the lyrics. At the same time, however, that old familiar feel that us fans have related to over the years is still undeniably present in all the songs, and there aren't many artistes who can strike such a wonderful balance between old and new. But I'm here to post a story! Who knows, maybe I might write a whole post about the new album? Anyway, on we go~

Renovate My Life

The isolation between the walls makes it harder to hear your calls.

She left that night, without a note, a letter, or explanation of any kind. He came back, and she was gone.

She was gone.

It seemed like just yesterday when she had come into his life—wasn’t it? The beer in his hand assured him of the fact.

Just yesterday…she had been fresh. Pretty. The girl of his dreams personified; the beauty of his heart personified. An angel in a summer dress, walking alone along the lonely beach, her long hair waving in the wind and her lips murmuring the words of an old ballad—a dream unto herself.

“Excuse me,” he had said, approaching her, “you look pretty—I mean, pretty familiar. Have I seen you in my dreams before?”

She had laughed, a chiming, youthful laugh. “Cheesy,” she assessed, “but you pull it off well.”

There were dates, dinners, dances—everything to pamper the romance of two young lovers as sugar sweetens coffee. Then, eventually, proposal, engagement and wedding.

Even now, the memory of that painfully breathtaking moment when he watched her come down the aisle towards him was sharp in his mind. It was a vision now in a different way that it was then—clothed in white, she resembled even more closely an angel, lying among the clouds, only she would be his angel, glowing, brilliant, loving, and then—

“I do,” he said. It was surreal.

“I do,” she said. The words themselves were smiles that graced her lips.

“When it’s this good,” someone said to them, “it’s got to be for good.”

And then came the honeymoon, the two happiest weeks of their lives. But neither were prepared for what came afterwards. The vows, after all, sealed a marriage, not a wedding.

“It was good at first,” he groaned, falling back onto the couch with his beer in hand. “She was good. We were good.”

It still echoed in his mind, how sweet the words—

“Honey, I’m home,” he would call evening after evening, tireless of the cliché that lingered over their threshold.

It seemed like a modern fairytale, the way he would come home after a long day of work to find his beautiful young wife preparing dinner for the two of them. The way they would sip a glass of red wine after dinner, just talking. The way they made love, the two of them perfect for each other. Their own little world.

“I couldn’t ask for more,” he mumbled, muffled by his arm, thrown over his face. “I didn’t ask for more.”

More came. She became pregnant.

It was a good thing, of course—they were both ecstatic when she found out, although neither of them had thought of it before. They started looking at maternity books, maternity clothes, even maternity food, and were beginning to think of names when tragedy struck.

He came home one day to find her huddled over in pain and tears, blood dripping down her legs like a scene from a horror movie. Her eyes when she looked up at him were brimming with despair, her hands cold and trembling as he pulled her up, shaken.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured to her on the way to the hospital. “You’re going to be okay.”

But she didn’t want to be okay—she wanted her baby to be okay, more than anything, and it was all she could think about as she lay awake in the darkness, consumed with guilt, sorrow and pain. They came like an avalanche, haunting her till shadows started forming under her eyes and she lost a frightful amount of weight.

“She changed. We changed.”

At first, it was little things like her wanting to stay at home more, refusing to go out for the dinner parties she used to relish. Then she would pull her hand out of his grasp at night, sometimes leaving the bedroom to sit, silent and staring, at the dinner table until he came down to coax her back to bed. There were some fights too—not many, but enough. He didn’t understand, she’d say. He didn’t feel the loss, although it was their baby. Yes, he would argue, rumpling up his hair in frustration, which was precisely why he did understand. But it was different for her, she would end up sobbing.

Finally, she had him move to the guest bedroom.

“It wasn’t right,” he whispered, staring at the ceiling.

The bedroom didn’t feel right at all. The smell of it was different—stale, lonely, frosty…without her scent, her warmth next to him. Night after night of lying awake took its toll on both of them, and they barely talked any more.

But deep into the nights, he could hear her across the hall. Sobs and cries…for him. Almost deliriously, she called out to him, for him, in her sleep. Familiar to him were the sounds of her wrangling with the sheets as she tossed and turned, his name escaping her lips traitorously, each sob a cry of help.

Clear as it was, he didn’t want to hear. The walls between them had created, more than ever, a rift between them, and isolation was the strongest thing they knew. He realized that if he buried himself deep enough in his pillows, it was hard to hear her calls.

“Torture,” he cried, hurling a cushion across the room. “It was torture and we both felt it.”

At the end of it all, she had gone and left. It had all gone horribly wrong—somewhere in his heart, he knew that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Maybe if they had tried harder, maybe if they had known what to do—

“Maybe this is just a nightmare,” he whispered to himself, holding his head between his hands. Maybe—

One day he would wake up, and she would still be lying there next to him, softly smiling, crooning the words of an old forgotten lullaby.