Emina Sonnad:

"My boyfriend left me at the start of a global pandemic. My revenge was this video.
Many people had moments of clarity when it seemed like the world was about to end. Some realised they didn’t speak to their grandparents enough. Others realised they were running dangerously low on toilet paper. And in the case of my ex-boyfriend, some realised they “just need to be single right now. I’m leaving the country to stay with my mother. I hope you understand.”
I did not understand. In fact, I got the phrase “abandon hope” tattooed across my forearm, which probably demonstrates the extent to which I did not understand. Our anniversary had been 7 days earlier. He had met me on an empty train holding a bouquet of flowers, and I had cried in his arms. After an uneasy evening of watching the news, he had promised that no matter what happened, we would make it through this together. The day after my breakup, I woke up to an empty studio apartment and entered the first lockdown, 5781 miles away from my family, alone and profoundly heartbroken.
I’m sure it’s common to expect the whole world to stop moving when your heart breaks. What’s less common is for this to actually happen. As covid19 swept across Europe, I felt the city around me shutting down in synchrony with my own body. The busy streets fell quiet, the school bells stopped ringing, and the silence kept me awake as I lay in bed, losing track of the days. I didn’t understand how I could continue to live without the most important person in my life. I’d felt pain before, but never like this. Unable to eat, sleep, or participate in any traditional post-breakup distractions, I tried to write.
I’ve always had a bad habit of immortalising my failed relationships in song. So I tried to write about how happy we had been. I tried to write about how much he had helped me, and how safe he had made me feel. I wanted to salvage every piece of the love we’d shared and wrap it all up inside a beautiful, soul-crushing story. If I couldn’t have him, at least I could have our story. But the words wouldn’t come. After what felt like a thousand failed attempts, it hit me: I couldn’t tell that story because it wasn’t true. Our relationship had left me feeling broken beyond repair, and I didn’t know how to write my way out of it.

Lying on my bedroom floor, I sifted through a box of photographs I had kept hidden from myself. These were our happy memories. I traced the outlines of our faces with my fingertips, trying to resuscitate our frozen smiles into something I could feel again. At the bottom of the box I found a crumpled piece of college ruled paper. It was a picture we had drawn together at the end of a bad acid trip. I remembered sobbing that night because my head was full of voices screaming at me to run away, out of that house and out of his arms. I had tried to drown them out, the same way I had drowned out my concerned family and friends. I wouldn’t listen to anyone who told me to leave, not even myself.
Staring down at the paper now, I noticed three words scribbled at the bottom, forming a question I didn’t remember asking.
“Where’s the applause?”
I repeated this question. I had spent the past twelve months putting on a hell of a show, contorting my mind into positions I hadn’t known were possible in an attempt to rationalise his behaviour. I had pushed myself past the point of exhaustion, fighting demons that aren’t mine to share. It was the performance of a lifetime, and the final act was met with complete silence. There is no applause for tricking yourself into believing you are loved.
I put the picture back in the box. Now I knew what to write about.

I wrote “Psychopath” in the spring of 2020, unsure of whether anyone would ever hear it. That was the year I took remote voice lessons and learned how to hit the high notes without losing my breath. Feeling bold, I sent my GarageBand demo to a producer I had always wanted to work with, who suggested we start immediately. I biked to his studio in the evenings after work and watched my song come to life in a way that had never happened outside of my own head. That summer, I felt myself come to life too. I made new friends who inspired me. The evening before recording the final vocals, I stayed up all night wandering the streets of Berlin with someone new, who looked at me with admiration when I told him about my dreams. I started to imagine what my life would look like if I let myself pursue those dreams.
My ex had once said to me, “Whenever you’re doing well, I wonder how long it will last before you fall back down again.” Pushing his voice to the back of my mind, I submitted the finished track to 35 record labels, one of which decided to sign me.
One year and one week after my breakup, I stood at the base of a massive hill and watched the silhouette of a camera crew chasing a dancer into the sunset. A team of professionals had spent the past twelve hours styling me, setting the scene with painstaking attention to detail, and capturing it on 35mm film. My song played like a movie soundtrack as the shadowy figures rushed to catch the final moments of daylight. Behind their KN95 masks, some of them were singing along. This song wasn’t mine anymore; it was all of ours.
Exhausted after a full day of filming, I stayed for one round of celebratory drinks before going home alone. As I was leaving, a crew member turned to me and said, “You know, I had my heart broken during lockdown too. Hearing your words helped.” I smiled and thanked her.
“Is it about someone special?”
I paused for a moment, remembering how it had felt to love a person so much I had stopped loving myself. I looked around at the team of people who had come together to turn this vision into reality, and I realised that this was the most alive I had felt in years.
“Yes,” I replied. “It’s about me.”