THE ORIGIN OF REVERBERATE
It all started innocently enough—desperate explanations texted back and forth, walls of words trying to bridge the chasm between us. Those messages grew into digital novels; we even jokingly wrote each other entire books. But they cracked something open wide. Suddenly, I wasn't just texting; I was falling down a well of my own making.
My thumbs would fly across the phone screen, crafting paragraph after paragraph, then abruptly freeze mid-sentence. A frown would crease my brow. Was that really the right word? Was I explaining myself clearly, or just digging deeper? The phone wasn’t enough. I'd slam it down and flip open my laptop. The screen would blaze to life, and instantly, tabs would explode across the browser like shrapnel: dense psychology papers dissecting attachment styles, sprawling relationship forums echoing my own silent screams, obscure blogs offering contradictory advice.
My Notes app became a war room—frantic, bullet-pointed salvos fired into the void: "Was I gaslighting? Or was he? What does ‘stonewalling’ ACTUALLY mean? How do you rebuild trust after THAT? Case study: couples who recovered from similar betrayals. STATISTICS. EVIDENCE. PROOF I’m not crazy." Hours bled away unnoticed, the room darkening except for the laptop’s glow. It was a desperate archaeology of my own pain—digging, Googling, cross-referencing, chasing validation through a mountain of digital notes that became monuments to my spiraling confusion.
Then came that argument, the nuclear one. Needing silence, needing escape, I locked myself away, headphones blasting music to drown out the static in my head. Slumped before the glaring laptop screen, exhaustion pulled me into that hazy space between awake and asleep… until a lyric sliced through the fog: "I was scared I was unprepared, for the things you said I could undo... that I hurt you, I would do anything for us to make it through... Draw me a smile and save me tonight... I am a blank page waiting for you to bring me to life."
That voice—Aguilera’s voice. My guiding light since childhood, since a sticky Sunday in the backseat after church, goosebumps rising as "I Turn to You" poured from the radio and my sister said, "That’s Christina Aguilera." When I heard her now, singing that line—"a blank page waiting for you to bring me to life"—it wasn’t just a lyric; it was the key turning in a lock I didn’t know I held.
The dam broke. Not explanations, not research, not armor—I found a story. My fingers flew to the keys, words pouring out for the page itself. Chapter 1, I typed. And just like that, Reverberate began.