Song Over The Bones: Silence As Reclamation
By Melissa Meszaros
Internet dating should not exist without a relationship jail.
If you fail to comply with who you say you are, there should be consequences, a fraudulent misrepresentation suit, maybe. Technology upgrades, but lies stay the same.
I work in public relations, a polishing job. I can take anyone’s half-formed thought and spin it into a headline. I build brands from scratch. It’s not deception; it’s survival in an industry that runs on attention. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I’ve always been socially awkward, because I see what other’s fail to (most of the time).
I’ve worked alongside plenty of other publicists who fancy themselves Samantha Jones of Sex and the City, circling celebrities at galas, smiling wide and nodding so hard their necks might snap. They orbit in a false sense of security, hoping some of the glitterati might rub off—while I’d be found around the corner sneaking cigarettes, where the upper echelon came to bum one. Where people dropped their performance for five minutes, and magic happened.
Somewhere between ADHD (a parting gift from the car accident and traumatic brain injury I sustained in 2018) and the daily exhaustion of being “on,” hammering identities into SEO-friendly capsules, I’m toast by 8 p.m. Most nights, I collapse into my ‘70s velveteen orange chair, salvaged from an alley, and queue up documentaries until I can breathe again.
Once or twice a month, I drag myself to a rock show. It’s the only place I ever feel alive. But even then, it’s an ordeal. I drink a few cocktails to keep a panic attack at bay, make strained small talk, then spend the next three days flatlined on the couch, all because I’m over forty.
Dating never stood a chance. Spending all day performing and enhancing images, the last thing I wanted was to slap on another coat for someone auditioning to be my life partner. Games are overrated. I’m too real for that. What you see is what you get, despite my moniker. And much to my projection, I expected the same of my ex, who styled himself as a holistic, metal-loving yogi.
We matched online not long after my head injury. Prince Charming inked in armor. He told me he had to leave town for a job and insisted, “long distance never works.” During my TBI recovery, that sounded rational enough to rush into a serious relationship. My therapist warned me not to make rash decisions, but I abandoned my life, my job, my friends, and my city without hesitation. I’ve never been one to let anyone tell me what to do, even when it’s for my own good. Rebel Grrrl maybe, but also stubbornness framed in independence.
To a brain-broke city girl who lived on concerts, Balenciaga bags, and crudité culture, moving to an eight-acre farm ten miles from a small town with no car and internet through a hotspot somehow made sense. At first, I told myself the quiet was healing, like some kind of forced retreat. But my world shrank to remote work and silence. It was pre-pandemic, but I was already living like it was one: isolated, invisible, too fogged to notice how much I was conceding just to keep the peace.
His outbursts began. Berating texts. Stonewalling. Telling me everything I did was wrong. His act unraveled one line at a time, and I was always cast as the villain.
Then came the wildfire. We evacuated with our pets but lost everything else. He hadn’t bothered to get insurance like I asked. I’d bent myself in every possible way to make it work, and he couldn’t manage the most basic responsibility. His performance cracked under the weight of it, and he ghosted our relationship. Accountability was too much for him to handle.
Ghosting is the ultimate silence. But silence cuts two ways. In his absence, I found another kind, one I could scream into until it became my own.
My refuge was music. Specifically grunge. Raw, jagged, and wrapped in distortion. Everyone knows Nirvana. But few know The Gits. Mia Zapata’s voice came from deep in the gut, blues-drenched in grit. Lyrics crystallized in sadness and rage, chords. Kurt Cobain once called her a “great fucking singer.”
—I’ll go on record and say Melvins riffs were heavy enough to hold me upright.
Screaming along was medicine. Silence became that space inside distortion, the truth inside dissonance. Music never lies. It’s messy, imperfect, and loud enough to drown out everything else. Inside it, I found the only silence I could trust. In the end, silence didn’t mean losing my voice. It meant finally hearing it, heeding it, and becoming a part of it.
Ain’t this a vignette for the masses? Internet dating is packaging. PR teaches you how to sell a story; my ex sold himself. He got the get-out-of-jail-free card, and I got stuck running damage control for a fraud.
The hardest “sentence” wasn’t his to serve—it was mine, learning to listen to what mattered and trust the echoes that matched my own. Cinderella’s Big Score? Not so much. I may be dented and a little sardonic, but at least I’m the real thing.
—
SONG OVER THE BONES
Love Burns―
When a wildfire destroys her home and her ‘soulmate’ disappears without a trace, Melissa is left to navigate the emotional and physical wreckage. Alone and adrift, she turns to her lifelong passion for music and hits the road in search of solace. Traveling from coast to coast, Melissa stops at influential landmarks and gravesites, leaving and collecting tokens in honor of iconic figures like Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and more.
This bold and unconventional healing journey challenges fairytales and the traditions of love and marriage. It dismantles Hollywood tropes and honors the raw, rebellious spirit of rock’n’roll that it takes to rebuild from nothing.
A follow-up to the author’s Heavy Metal Headbang, Song Over the Bones breaks down the fairytales of love and healing, leaving space for something raw and real. It’s not a traditional redemption story but a tribute to the fight, to the scars that don’t fade, and to the fierce resilience of those who build home from the pieces life leaves behind.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers
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