Origins is a recurring new music feature that sees us giving artists the chance to explain the influences behind their newest track.
When someone you love is struggling to find themselves, it’s only natural to want to be there for them. The basic instinct of anyone with empathy, after all, is to help when someone you care about is in need. What becomes tricky, however, is when what said person really needs is to be left alone. It’s a hard position to be in — for both parties — one that can leave everyone involved feeling heartbroken and helpless.
It’s in this “space between” that Monica Martin finds herself on her new song, “Patient”. The track finds the former PHOX frontwoman trying to find strength in pushing a loved one away while pop piano melodies sadly sway under constantly building alt-folk orchestration. “I’m determined to kill my burdens/ Every pain I’ve ever known is mine to own,” she sings with a palpable but resolute sorrow. “You can’t love me for us both.”
Speaking of the single’s meaning in a press release, Martin said,
“We all are on respective journeys to unpack mental baggage and needing to create that space while in a relationship can be really tough… especially when someone wants to feel needed, you can be perpetually soothed, and while that feels great and all, that limits you from forging healthy mental pathways for yourself. ‘Patient’ is a song asking for space; I want to be my best so my relationship isn’t about co-dependence.”
Take a listen below.
For more on what led her to being “Patient”, Martin has shared some of the track’s Origins.
My Early Life:
Sharing for context, not sympathies: My childhood and adolescence was tumultuous for a myriad of reasons, and that was all exasperated by living in a very non-diverse (and predominantly closed-minded) rural Midwest town. Anxiety, fear of abandonment, and shame linger in my body and skews my perspective, hence, all the therapy I do to reprogram that/the space I need to maintain to do that.
My Maybe-In-Ten-Years-Ex:
I had a long-term relationship with someone who was working on his bad habits, and so we had countless mutually meaningful late-night conversations, but each of our demons crept up by the morning, and we’d wake up unable to be consistently supportive of each other. You (generally) can’t pull someone out of the trench if you’re also in the damn trench.
I-Need-You-to-Need-Me-Ex:
Oh boy, I told him I needed more space so I could take better care of myself and not feel reliant on his feverish perma-presence (that was, I guess, welcomed in the infatuation period) the next time I got sick and asked to be alone, he showed up at my apartment unannounced with soup, and guilted me for not being appreciative.
My Therapists and Friends:
For meaningful insights to and conversations on your journeys and not making me feel strange about occupying more space than I used to. Cheers to standing up tall, y’all.
