Stuck on Repeat: My Immortal by Evanescence

Sometimes months pass without seeing him. No messages. No accidental crossings. No reminders that we still occupy the same orbit.

And then suddenly, he appears again. Never to stay. Never to repair. Never to return. Just long enough to remind me that he still exists somewhere in the same physical world I do. Just long enough to remind me that he chooses to orbit me—often without me realizing it. And just long enough to remind me that the connection still—and always has—exists somewhere in the background of both our lives.

Of course, if you asked him, the story would sound very different. In his narrative, I am the one who left. I am the one who wanted other people. I am the one who walked away from what we had. 

But don’t worry—I understand the narrative. I know the story he tells himself. I know that when he appears again it doesn’t mean he’s leading me on. It doesn’t mean he’s reconsidering. It doesn’t mean he will ever return. I know it means nothing in the version of events he believes.

And as he sat in his car, he made it a point—though he would absolutely say he didn’t—for me to hear the song playing through his speakers. Louder and louder he turned the volume until I could make out what song it was.  After some time I made the song out and began singing to it, even after he turned it off: My Immortal by Evenescence.

Apparently he listens to it all the time. But don’t worry. I know that too means nothing.

Still, as I listen, I find myself wondering who he hears when those lyrics play.

“I'm so tired of being here

Suppressed by all my childish fears”

That part sounds like him. Not childish, exactly—his fears are real. Deep. Old. Powerful enough to shape entire life decisions. Maybe he hears that line and recognizes how exhausting it is to be controlled by them.

Then the song continues.

“And if you have to leave

I wish that you would just leave”

And that’s where the strange irony of the song begins. Because I have never been the one to leave. He ended the relationship. He broke up with me and immediately began building a life with someone else. The humane thing—the clean thing—would have been to simply leave. But he never actually did. He is gone, yet continues to orbit. Appearing. Lingering in ways that make full separation impossible.

“your presence still lingers here 

and it won't leave me alone.”

That line feels less like the song and more like my life. Because even when he’s physically gone, his presence still lingers here. Not because I refuse to move forward—but because some connections don’t simply vanish when someone decides the relationship is over.

“These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real”

That part, too, feels painfully accurate.

The wounds won’t heal in the way people often imagine healing to look. Time doesn’t erase things like this. Some experiences leave permanent marks. But wounds don’t have to control us forever. We can still free ourselves from them. We can still repair parts of ourselves, rebuild a life around what remains—even if the pain never disappears. Sometimes it becomes something like chronic pain: not visible, but always present somewhere beneath the surface. He doesn’t seem to share my beliefs anymore.

“but you still have all of me.”

Sometimes I wonder if he knows that this line is me. That he will always have all of me—even if he chooses to remain gone, even if I've told him I'm not in love with him anymore. Because the truth is, I never had all of him. Parts of him always belonged to his fears, his doubts, his escape routes. He’s someone else’s now, so this line cannot be his.

“You used to captivate me with your resonating light 

now I'm bound by the life you left behind”

The irony in that line is almost unbearable. I didn’t leave the life we built. He took it—and handed it to someone else. As if the few months she had shown up for him somehow outweighed the thirteen years I spent building a life with him, piece by piece. 

“Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams”

His face still appears in my dreams almost every night. I cannot escape the nightmare in my waking and sleeping life.

“Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me”

And his voice still has the power to undo whatever fragile sense of stability I’ve managed to rebuild in the months that pass without seeing or speaking to him. Life becomes quieter. The emotional waters settle just enough that I begin to believe the distance might finally hold.

Then the song reaches its quiet conclusion.

“I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone”

I have tried, too. And rationally, I know he is gone. But then there are days like today—days when he reappears just long enough to remind me that he still exists in the background of my life.

And suddenly the song’s final realization makes uncomfortable sense.

“but though you're still with me 

I've been alone all along.”

Maybe that has been the truth the entire time: with him, without him, either way—I have been alone.

Yvonne Rodriguez, M.Ed.

Thursday, 12 March 2026