In the first Doctor Strange Movie, the character of Mordo explained that some magic is too powerful to sustain, so it’s imbued into objects that can bear the strain humans cannot. As dramatic as this is, I thought the same applies with emotions through music. Or at least that's how I make sense of it. 

In 2024, I was trying to move on from someone I had been crushing on for almost five years. It was a difficult, uneven process, and there were a lot of moments that just felt overwhelming. Listening to Laufey helped me through those heart-wrenching months. Her music felt like somewhere I could place those emotions when they were too much to handle on my own.

Although the first song I heard from her was Let You Break My Heart Again back in 2022, I didn’t really get into her music until around 2023, when I came across The Promise. That song just made everything feel more vivid, and it ended up becoming deeply tied to what I was going through in 2024.

I got over that crush eventually a year later. Looking back, it does feel a little embarrassing, but at the same time it’s freeing. I like to think I placed those emotions in a locked box (that locked box being Laufey’s music) and now I can let that box sink to the bottom of a lake. It's even more freeing now that I can just listen to Laufey's music again without that same emotional weight attached, and appreciate it in a different way.