I vividly remember walking through DC after a Bruins-Capitals game (we lost, unfortunately). It was early October—still beautiful weather—but what hit me most was this stark feeling that I didn’t recognize anything around me. Not the buildings, not the people. I was walking through all this energy and excitement but felt completely invisible, like I was hiding in plain sight.
Back at my apartment that afternoon, I felt this burning need to get something off my chest. I’d had this feeling before since moving from Colorado a few months earlier, but this time my heart was telling me something different was about to happen. I can’t explain why, but I knew this experience was the start of something new.
I picked up my guitar and found myself playing a chord progression I’d never used before. It felt completely organic and quickly became the verse section.
I’d struggled for years to find that sweet spot where authenticity meets creativity, but in this moment I knew I needed to listen to what my soul wanted to say. So I started writing the first verse:
[Verse]
All on my own
And I’m never coming home
Sometimes I wonder why
I’m here at all
Here at all
25 down
How many more to go
This life is so cold
I’m told it reaches wide
To each their own
It was finally hitting me that I’d left behind five years of life in Colorado and before that, 20 years of life in Massachusetts. No family nearby, no close friends yet, no roommates—just me. The isolation was real and left me alone with my thoughts, which is exactly what sparked this verse. Looking back though, that space from everyone else forced me to look inward and explore parts of myself I’d been ignoring for most of my life.
As days passed, I kept coming back to this track. The chorus hit me after countless nights at parties, clubs, and events where I felt that same “hiding in plain sight” feeling. Surrounded by people but completely disconnected.
Musically, the chorus uses the same progression as the verse but shifted up a key for some extra lift. That’s when these lyrics came:
[Chorus]
All these faces and places I’ve been seeing they just haunt me lately
Reminding me of the things I used to know
It’s getting harder and harder just to find someone else worth chasing
Feels like nobody cares about me
These words felt completely natural. In previous tracks, I’d tried so hard to be creative and clever that my songs ended up buried in metaphors—no one could tell what I was actually trying to say, which made it impossible to feel “heard.”
With all that loneliness and isolation, I was desperately trying to find someone to date. That’s where the song started. But as I kept writing, it evolved into something deeper than just seeking companionship.
Learning More About Myself
A few weeks later, as I kept hanging out with new friends and meeting people, I started developing feelings for one of my close friends. It completely confused me and made me question everything about my identity. I’d been conditioned my whole life to think I was supposed to act a certain way, love a certain way. This new attraction challenged everything I thought I knew about myself.
That confusion sparked a wave of creativity. I couldn’t tell my friend how I felt, couldn’t navigate these feelings, couldn’t ask anyone for advice without fear of judgment. Music was the only way I knew how to express what I was going through. That’s when I wrote the second verse:
[Verse 2]
Pay no mind
To my heart and soul
Conflicted, it’s true, want you
But I don’t know why
I guess you’re my type
Anything goes
And anyone knows it’s all but a dream
Reprieve
A conscious lie
Some call divine
To me, this captured the internal conflict of realizing I was 25, had never truly been in love with anyone, and was finally trying to listen to my heart instead of letting my mind talk me out of what I was feeling. It was incredibly difficult to process.
That same day, I felt inspired to work on the second chorus. Growing up listening to Avenged Sevenfold, I loved how they’d occasionally double their second chorus for extra impact. So that’s exactly what I did.
I know this will sound cheesy, but hear me out—the second half of that chorus is one of the most important sections I’ve ever written. For the first time, I’d captured exactly what I was trying to say; it perfectly summarized the predicament I was in. Here are the lyrics:
[Chorus 2]
…
So many hotties at parties everybody says I should be banging
Don’t know what’s going on with me
If I’m being honest, there’s someone on my mind, and I just can’t shake it
I guess it all feels scary to me
Instead of over-complicating things with metaphors and double entendres like I always did, I just tried to be completely honest. It paid off—I remember singing those words and feeling a shiver down my spine. After nearly 25 years of feeling like I could never say what I meant or be truly heard, this was a turning point. Honesty isn’t always easy or glamorous, but it feels infinitely better than never saying what you need to say.
My heart was completely conflicted. I kept meeting beautiful, single people everywhere I went, but whenever I tried connecting with them, I couldn’t get this one friend off my mind.
The Double Meaning Emerges
As time went by, my song was still unfinished. It was early November and I was missing a bridge section—plus I knew the existing outro was weak. I’d always loved the barbershop quartet sound, so one day I felt inspired to lay down some harmonized vocals. After a couple takes, I narrowed down my lyric selection:
[Bridge]
Face your fears in another direction
‘Cause I want you here in my lonely reflection
Every friend I’ve made is another subjection
Only you can bring me home
Well if I cry and nobody’s around to hear it
Does it make a sound
And all I’m saying is I’m gonna be lonely
Until you come back around
It’s this back-and-forth between talking to myself and talking directly to the person I still had feelings for. Again, I decided to be brutally honest.
My heart wanted one thing, my conditioned mind wanted another, but one thing was certain—I was still lonely and struggling to be vulnerable with people. Every new friend I met somehow gave me another reason to retreat into my safety zone. Not because they made me afraid of vulnerability, but because the way I presented myself to these new people still felt inauthentic at times. I just didn’t know how to make the leap.
An Unexpected Ending
Originally, I planned for the outro to fade slowly to nothing with most of the lyrics becoming inaudible. But when I sent the track to my producer Dean, I didn’t specify that—and he had something completely different in mind.
I remember playing Xbox one day, feeling pretty down until I randomly got a text from him with a video attached. He’d felt some inspiration and added these absolutely beautiful harmonies while modifying the arrangement. Here’s the original video he sent me:
I was absolutely hyped hearing this—it gave the track the extra flavor it needed and perfectly highlighted the entire point of the song. I didn’t know who I was, I was working to break my conditioned thinking, and I was hoping that someday soon I’d become the “someone else” my heart always knew I was, so I could finally find someone else to fall in love with. These lyrics summed it all up:
[Outro]
Found myself just a little closer to being real
Someday soon gonna be the person I wanted to
Found myself just a little closer to being real
Someday soon gonna walk around like I wanted to
To Put it Simply:
The beautiful thing about music and art is that everything’s open for interpretation. But I think the most powerful theme of this track is its raw honesty. This phase of my life was pivotal—it made me realize I’d been living thinking I was true to myself, when really I’d been refusing to listen to what my heart had been desperately trying to tell me all along.
Allowing yourself the space to explore your own identity can be incredibly challenging, especially when you first need to break down walls you’ve built to protect the ego you were conditioned to form. This song represents the start of a new me—the first time I felt ready to move forward with an open mind and an open heart.