Remember when life was just simpler? The hardest decision you made was which flavor of lip gloss to steal from Claire’s. Your biggest drama was whether your crush liked you back, not whether you were emotionally available enough for a situationship. Then adulting showed up with its bills and anxiety and endless self-monitoring, and guys made everything simultaneously more exciting and more exhausting. I miss when wanting something didn’t require a full mental breakdown first. Back then you could just feel things – attraction, joy, whatever – without your brain turning it into a crisis. You hit your twenties and suddenly you’re managing symptoms instead of living, performing stability instead of actually feeling stable, and wondering when the fuck everything got so heavy. Marlei’s ‘2009’ landed in my life right when I’ve been lying to my mom about being fine for three years now, wishing I could go back to when existing didn’t require this much goddamn effort.
The opening line hits immediately – “Screw social anxiety / I’m out of college, 23 / Can’t make friends / No mental peace / Still can’t sleep without the tree.” She’s 23, graduated, technically adulting, and completely falling apart. Social anxiety has her so locked up she can’t even make friends anymore. Can’t sleep without weed because her body refuses to cooperate naturally. Here’s the thing nobody tells you about your twenties – you spend your whole childhood being promised that adulthood equals freedom, and then you arrive and it’s just new creative ways to feel like you’re failing at being human.
The honesty in this next line kills me – “Now, if you ask me you know I wouldn’t lie to you / Growing up happy can be a little hard to do.” Growing up happy is actual work now. It’s a whole job. She misses her friends, wonders what they’re up to, wants to go back to when time felt infinite instead of this anxious countdown. “Wanna reminisce and talk about how fast the time flew” – yeah, that’s what isolation does. Everyone else’s life looks like it’s moving forward while you’re stuck rewatching the same show for the fourth time because choosing something new requires too much energy.
Advertisement
Listen, this pre-chorus destroys me – “Life was so carefree / With no responsibilities / My only job was being me / When the coolest thing was.” Your only job was being you. No performance. No optimization. No productivity metrics or morning routines or explaining yourself to anyone. Your body just existed. Back then, attraction was simple too. You liked someone, you got butterflies, done. Now there’s overthinking and spiraling and the exhausting work of trying to be present when your brain wants to dissociate from literally everything.
Bikes with no hands – “Riding on a bike with no handles, yeah / Kidz Bop on the iPod nano, yeah / Staying up watching Disney channel” – that’s the kind of reckless physical confidence that completely evaporates when your nervous system decides the world is a threat. I can’t even ride a bike now without overthinking my balance. Staying up late used to be rebellion – now it’s something I pay for with three days of exhaustion. Those memories represent a time when pleasure was uncomplicated, when your body just did things without requiring recovery time or coping mechanisms.
Real talk – “All I do is fight off my depression, yeah / Try to keep myself from all the stressing, yeah / I told my mom I’m doing fine / Still wish it was 2009 though.” Every. Single. Day. Just fighting and managing and lying about it. That lie to mom? Same lie you tell dates. Same lie you tell friends. Same lie you tell yourself in the mirror while brushing your teeth. When your mental state is this fragile, intimacy becomes terrifying. You’re not thinking about flirting or chemistry or attraction. You’re just trying to get through the interaction without your anxiety showing.
She made the romantic choice in “Unlearning every single habit / Most chose money, I chose passion / Overshare and overthink / Still won’t put up boundaries” – passion over paycheck – and she’s still drowning. The oversharing and overthinking? That’s what happens when you’re so starved for connection you give everything away immediately, then spend three days spiraling about whether you said too much. No boundaries means every interaction feels dangerous because you don’t know how to protect yourself. When you can’t regulate your own emotions, desire stops being fun. It becomes another thing that might wreck you.
Here’s where it gets devastating – “Dissociate / From the madness / Drink away / All the sadness / Meditate / Attempt relaxing / Push myself to make it happen.” She’s doing everything right. Meditating. Attempting self-care. Pushing through. And she’s still dissociating and drinking the pain away because sometimes having all the tools isn’t enough. When your body’s stuck in survival mode, there’s no bandwidth left for wanting someone. Sexual energy requires feeling safe in your own body first, and Marlei’s body has become this high-maintenance anxious thing that won’t even let her sleep naturally.
Advertisement
Look, chronic isolation is when being alone stops being a choice and becomes your entire default setting. “Stuck in chronic isolation / Grieving through my medication / Smile because I need the practice / Farewell to rose tinted glasses.” You’ve forgotten how to be around people without rehearsing the interaction first. Smiling for practice? That’s performing for everyone – your mom, your friends, any guy who shows interest – while you’re actually falling apart inside. When you’re this disconnected from yourself, connecting with someone else feels impossible. The flirting, the chemistry, the easy physical attraction you used to have? All buried under layers of anxiety and performance.
Marlei, this Houston-born, Austin-based artist who’s been making music since she was 16, channels Victoria Monét’s storytelling and Sabrina Carpenter’s emotional honesty into something that feels cinematic and painfully real at the same time. As a bisexual Black woman blending trap beats with dreamy R&B vocals and K-pop influences, she’s making space for stories about what your twenties actually feel like when your mental health is a daily battle. “2009 is me talking to the girl I used to be – the one who dreamed big without knowing how hard life could hit,” Marlei says. “I wanted to give her space, and show people that growth doesn’t erase who you were, it honors it.”
The ending wrecks me – “I can’t do another day / It’s not the same / Traded all my wonder for reality / And living for when the coolest thing was.” She traded wonder for reality. That’s it. That’s the whole devastating point. Growing up was supposed to deliver more – more freedom, more pleasure, more everything. Instead it delivered constant self-monitoring and symptom management and explaining yourself to everyone including yourself. The song ends with “Ahh / Still wish it was” and doesn’t even finish. Just exhales this longing for something that’s permanently gone.
I’m still not completely honest with everyone about being fine while privately barely holding it together and still overthinking every interaction until there’s no heat left in it. The version of me who could just exist without negotiating with my own nervous system first? She feels like someone I used to know. I remember when life felt effortless. Now I spend every day just trying to keep it together. Before adulting and guys and your own brain chemistry teamed up and fucked everything up in the most exhausting way possible. But guess what? I’m not alone. And neither are you.
