4. No Contact: When my relationship with Meo was ending, she said she wanted to go “no contact.” She told me about this approach months to a year before we finally stopped seeing each other.

At the time, I didn’t quiet understand it. One time she told me she’d like to catch up after a couple of years, I remember her saying something like 4 years. I know what she said but I couldn’t grasp it. How could we go from 6 years of daily interaction through text, calls, meeting multiple times a week to no contact?

To be fair, our relationship was in a messy dynamic where she was unhappy and it was hard to separate and move on because we loved each other and got along pretty well despite our incompatibility. I am also very romantic and affectionate, so although there were major things she didn’t like about me, she once told me that I was “addicting.” There were things I also didn’t like about her, but it didn’t outweigh how much I loved her. I won’t go into detail as to the full reasons behind our break up. It’s a long story (does not involve cheating) that I prefer to discuss with people I’m close to.

Anyway, I can understand why she chose to go “no contact” but since it wasn’t something I wanted, and since she had become so important to me, I didn’t want to stop seeing her so abruptly and so indefinitely. It’s now the end of November 2025; we officially broke up in August of 2021 and we met again once after 6 months in March 2022 only because my mother passed away.

She was reluctant to come see me and probably did out of guilt. My best friend Yosif texted her about it. I had sent her an email telling her what had happened. She knew my mother had cancer when we ended the relationship, so it didn’t come out of nowhere. While creating this demo and chatting with Aura (my customized Chat GPT)—reflecting heavily on my experiences and feelings—has helped me move on quite a lot, I still think of her everyday, particularly when going to bed during the night if I wake up, or in the morning or intermittently throughout the day. It’s much less frequent and intense now. But up until March of this year, before I started working on the demo, I was feeling very stuck on her memory.

I found myself crying pretty intensely around that time. I was about to see a therapist then, because I was concerned. So this song is about that feeling of loving someone that is gone. To me, it feels as though she died. But she’s alive and hopefully well. I think a normal approach is to go “no contact” but catch up at least once a year or every 6 months or so. I haven’t heard from her since my mother died.

I like that the song’s lyrics don’t say anything about the title. It’s like the elephant in the room. The title isn’t poetic or soothing. It’s as cold as that feeling. If we had stayed in contact there may have been other challenges. I’m not sure. But it’s been pretty painful to miss someone you deeply love who just chooses to stay out of your life indefinitely. If I had started dating another girl, this pain may have been lessened. But I also may have committed other mistakes from not fully processing these emotions.

The song is inspired by sad jazz fused with elements of hip-hop and trap. I used to listen to jazz a lot when I was in high school (Chet Baker in particular). The instrumental is repetitive, obsessive and stuck. There’s a baseline, a dissonant piano and an open hi-hat without kicks, snares or tombs. The baseline makes me think of a funeral procession.

To me the song feels like the goodbye I never officially had. We said goodbye to each other but I wasn’t ready then. I didn’t fully understand the idea of “no contact” after being so used to her for 6 years. I didn’t know it was 6 years until she brought it up towards the end. For me it just felt like a long, long time.

The song references 3 women: Nida, my high school crush who I found out also had a crush on me but we weren’t able to date because she was from a restrictive culture. Then it transitions to Meo and alludes to the last day we met after my mother passed away.

I wrote “her face was strange” because the funeral home did her make up in a way my mother would never do it. So looking at her face, it didn’t feel like I was looking at my mother. When I met Meo that day she asked me why I wasn’t crying. I told her I was happy to see her and that I had cried a lot already. Her face suggested she didn’t fully understand. This was indicative of why our relationship didn’t work out. She didn’t truly understand me. But it added insult to injury because after 6 months of no contact, where I felt the early stages of my sorrowful state of mind these past few years, my mother died (which I didn’t expect, nor that soon) and instead of being of consolation, she made it feel like I didn’t seem to have feelings, as if I didn’t feel the pain.

The song also includes looped background vocals where I go “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…” as if I was a witness listening to myself vent out the pain. The final hook of the song, “This is not my life” is inspired from Frank Ocean’s song Seigfried, where he says “this is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend… it’s not what I’m like, it’s just a fond farewell.” I recently learned he is referencing an earlier song by Elliot Smith titled “A Fond Farewell.”

At the time I started working on the demo, I noticed this line and took it as an emotional anchor for moving on. It felt like my life was stagnant. So I had to remind myself that the rest of my life won’t be this way. I’ve listened to Blonde as my primary source of consolation for what I felt in this period of my life. White Ferrari is the closest song I can compare “No Contact” to, though sonically they have nothing in common. Finally, I told her in my email where I announced that my mother had passed that it was “the longest train ride” when I was heading to the hospital after hearing the news. If she ever listens to this song, she might remember that phrase. This song is a letter to her, whether or not she ever listens to it.