Rooting for your Downfall

Something about the window seats got you feeling like a poet

I often find myself in an imaginary scenario. Years in the future, I have successfully signed a book deal and become a well paid full time author. I have a home in a city I love, I’ve travelled the world, have time for all my hobbies, maybe a gorgeous amazing partner… all is perfect. So I go back home to see my old friends. In these imagined conversations and interactions, at every moment I prove to them that I have actually made it, that my life is good outside of the bubble they are in. I show them how far I’ve come, how much I love who I am, how much I’ve changed beyond their expectations of me. Their lives on the other hand are much the same. They are all married with babies, in the same street their parents live, and their grandparents live, and they have the life that I always feared but to them, it’s a goal to be achieved. Upon seeing my life, the illusion of the bubble is shattered. And they wistfully admit I was right, they realize there is more to life, and applaud my bravery. I prove I made it, despite everything.

Recently I realized that this scenario is based on one sort of flawed argument: that my friends are rooting for my downfall.

Now, stay with me; I don’t think my hometown friends are actively rooting for my downfall, nor do I think they believe I made the right choices or that I am headed on a good path. I do believe they don’t think about it so often to care enough. They have their own lives to think about, and my imagined scenario depends on them paying a little too much attention to my life. But if they were to think about my life enough to wish me something, it would be success.

Except that their version of success is not the same as mine.

Of course this internal analysis came to me as a result of Noah Kahan’s new album. In the song Downfall, the exact feeling I imagined in my hometown friends is expressed in the following words:

I’m glad you left, but you’ll be back

So call me when it goes to shit

I’ll be keeping the house the way it was

I won’t rub your face in it

I swear I won’t tell anyone

I don’t mind being your dead end

I think it’s fine to never move on

Keep my ear up to the doorframe

And I’ll keep rooting for your downfall

• Downfall, The Great Divide, Noah Kahan

I listened to this song over and over again—mostly because it is really catchy of course—and I stopped to think about how my friends actually felt about me. When I left, they just kept working towards their own lives and goals: to some a nice job, marriage, kids, family, taking care of the house, going to church, and so on. I, on the other hand, moved, changed, travelled, grew, learned, moved again, fell down, got hurt, got back up, somehow am still here, somewhere between where I was and where I will be. My life to them is odd, and definitely not aspirational. Hence why I’ve always imagined as if they’d be back home brooding and watching in distaste, just waiting for my downfall, hoping I’d crash and burn, that I’d end up back where I started, back where they are. That they wish I’ll somehow turn back to that life, and become one of them. And in reality, they do, that’s exactly what they hope for me; except to them that is what wishing for my success looks like.

My friend who is getting married next year was telling me “Oh this is such a good phase, such a nice moment to be living. I am so happy to be planning the wedding.” And I nodded with a stiff smile. I have listened to many of her complaints, I know the things she is having to give up, the life she is signing up for, what the moment she is living encompasses, and wow, I wouldn’t categorize that as a nice moment to be living. But she does. She has dreamed of this her whole life, she is willing to give up other dreams for this one. And in this scenario I am the true villain. I have multiple friends who are in a similar phase in life—the getting married and settling down at 22 phase. I feel like I am their Jo March in Little Women:

I think I often need to be reminded that I do not need to be projecting my dreams onto them. My lifestyle, my freedom… you see I mean well! But to them it’s no good.

In reality, my success might be their definition of a downfall, and vice-versa. So yes, what they wish for me is what I would define as a downfall, but they would define as success. Our different perspectives in life make it so that wishing our own definitions of success onto each other, we are mutually wishing for each other’s downfall.

From their perspective, one could say I am the one rooting for their downfall. What I wish for them is to realize what they live isn’t all there is to life. I wish for them to find freedom like I did. For the bubble to break. For them to realize that their lives could be a lot more. But that would mean shattering their reality, it would be their downfall.

Out of love, I’ve been rooting for their downfall, and they’ve been rooting for mine.