[Intro, spoken, a phone voice-mail system]
You have one new voice message. Message received Tuesday at 2:23 hours

[Spoken]
*background noise of a beach, seagulls chirping, cars passing by*
Yo, uhm, uhhhh
I broke the necklace
The necklace that you gave me finally after wearing it for over four years, daily
I snapped the cord at the wedding [?] on the weekend because I felt like it was choking me, literally
Not metaphorically
And yeah, I cop that irony so I tied it around my wrist because I felt guilty
And it looked good, actually, and it felt good, like it was still a part of me
And I genuinely, genuinely thought I was going to be wearing it forever, now I'm
Not
But now it's sitting on my coffee table at home, snapped clean in half, and I've- uhhh- superglued it back together plenty of times in the past but this time when I looked down and saw that it was broken
This time a piece of it was- was- was missing
Presumably lying in the road somewhere in town, or, I don't know, in somebody's bed, I guess
I- I can't tell you how sorry I am
See this was
My agreement with you
In my head
If I can't- if I can't love you how you need to be loved, if I- if I can't stop myself from freaking out all day, every fucking day until I'm dead
Then I will wear this necklace and I won't ever leave the house without it
So if I'm walking down the street and I'm hit by a car
Or my heart explodes in my chest, then
They would tell you
They would tell you that I was wearing it, when I went, and then you would know
And then that would be your last memory of me, not the sight of me screaming from across the Atlantic Ocean, or audibly shaking down a telephone wire, but the news that I carried a piece of you everywhere with me
In the shower
In my sleep, when I was reading and writing and learning how to drive
When I was
Handling my shit and when I was losing my entire fucking mind
And yeah, when I was falling in love with new people too
Going entire days without thinking of you
Getting resentful about the pile of your belongings still taking up much-needed space in the corner of my living room
All the times when I hated myself
And all the times when I was proud of myself, for trying not just to grow but to thrive, y'know?
I never forgot who taught me the basics of what it means to be alive
I made a promise
And I broke it
So I think I'm gonna take a photograph of that necklace and
Put it on an album cover
And then I'll memorize all of this
And I'll recite it at every show, make it my four-minute watermark, because I still believe that if I can make everybody understand what you meant to me then that will act as my apology
If I can't tell you how sorry I am then maybe the rest of the world
Can do it for me
This was my agreement with you in my head
I can't love you, not how you need to be loved, but I can and so I will wear that around my neck every day
All day
Until I'm fucking dead-
[Outro, spoken, a phone voice-mail system]
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