Before Facebook, before Twitter, before all of these social media platforms, there was Y!M, the OG messenger where I shouted into the void through my status. The first thing I would do when I logged on was to set my status to a song lyric. Sometimes the lines didn’t really mean anything (it was probably my earworm of the moment) but most of the time, I was borrowing words to say what I was feeling at a particular moment.
 
John Mayer’s Room for Squares was one of my favorite albums to listen to back in the 2000s. I can’t count the number of times I listened to “Love Song For No One” on repeat. I'm tired of being alone/So hurry up and get here—the battle cry of NBSBs everywhere. And then there was “Your Body Is A Wonderland.” Something 'bout the way your hair falls in your face/I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase/You tell me where to go and/Though I might leave to find it/I'll never let your head hit the bed/Without my hand behind it—I imagined what my non-existent boyfriend would have crooned to me.
 
Through the years, his words saw me through tiffs with my parents (Fathers, be good to your daughters/Daughters will love like you do/Girls become lovers who turn into mothers/So mothers be good to your daughters too); what I thought was a quarter-life crisis (Stop this train/I want to get off and go home again/I can't take the speed it's moving in/I know I can't/But, honestly, won't someone stop this train?); getting my heart broken (When you're dreaming with a broken heart,/The waking up is the hardest part); and maybe for a brief moment, wishing to be wanted back (She thinks I can't see the smile that she's faking/The poses for pictures that aren't being taken).

—M.

Before the dawn of Spotify, burned CDs from friends (and crushes) were the way I'd discover music. And though I had already fallen in love with John Mayer thanks to my cousin's graduating from bubblegum pop to his music, it was my high school crush that introduced me to bootleg John Mayer.

 

This high school crush was too cool for mainstream releases. He would YM (pre-What's app chatting) me songs I should search for on Limewire or Kazaa and I tried my best with dial-up internet to find them all. So when he burned me a CD of bootleg music from his favorite artists -- who of course then became mine, it was the cherry on top that John Mayer had peppered songs in it.

 

From Breakaway to Comfortable to Man on the Side and Sucker, I always felt like John Mayer's songs were talking to me and this constant pining that I felt. John Mayer didn't always get the girl in the songs. He was always waiting around and being available and just hoping and praying they'd like him back, too.

 

So though it felt like the end of the world that the high school crush liked some other girl (and told me about it all the time), it didn't feel too bad because John went through it too, and was telling me it'd all be ok (ish). And just like John Mayer, I couldn't bring myself to walk away from the high school crush and instead pined and pined some more. Until I couldn't pine any longer.

 

So even if this high school crush faded (after lots of time, and lots of trying and lots of John Mayer songs playing on repeat), my love for Mr. Mayer and the feels I felt listening to him all those years ago, carries on. I really am a sucker for him.

—P.