Growing up, I subjected myself to all kinds of useless musical filler simply because it could be purchased at a Christian bookstore and my parents didn’t allow secular music. Although I was allowed to listen to a few bands you might call ‘actually talented,’ I really thought I’d found God all over again when I heard Sunny Day Real Estate.

I circumvented the obvious problem of where their music could be purchased by doing extensive research into their lead singer’s conversion. Somehow, I convinced my parents that they were all right. How It Feels to Be Something On became my soundtrack. I devoured it. From the liner notes to the lyrics to the music, Jeremy Enigk and the boys were my audio sustenance.

Around the time of my personal music conversion, I had been seeing a girl named Alex (I use the word seeing loosely, since we lived nearly two hours away from one another). Even so, I’d actually had to ask her father permission to “date” her! We exchanged letters and phone calls, and had as much personal contact as we could get our parents to drive us to. We also made each other mix tapes.

Her mixing prowess wasn’t nearly as strong as mine – she had a Lorena Bobbitt-like tendency to lop off the end of the last song on the tape – but she had promising musical taste. She introduced me to several bands I still enjoy, like the Tragically Hip, Sloan, and the Watchmen. And I gave her my Sunny Day. Over the course of a few mix tapes, I gave her the entire album. We’d bask in the glow of “Guitar and Video Games” after making out while her parents were at the store.

And then, when I turned nineteen, I found out my parents were separating. All of a sudden nothing made sense, and unfortunately, I took a lot of my anger and confusion out on Alex. I’d bottle up a month’s worth of feelings and unleash them at once over the course of an hour-long walk. In the end, I slept with someone else, told Alex, and broke everything completely apart. Letters were thrown away, tapes broken, mileage saved. And Sunny Day only reminded me of making out.

When I came to, I discovered that I had spent all the second chances Alex could give, and had used up the good of Sunny Day for the bad of something fleeting. To this day she and I aren’t on speaking terms, although I do get occasional updates through mutual acquaintances. And Sunny Day occupies a dusty part of my CD collection, relegated to silence through no fault of its own.