By Mike Sain't Louis ·
Ya no te quiero, or the lie that helps me keep going
Saying «ya no te quiero» (I don't love you any more) sounds like a full stop. In my case it's more of a comma pretending to be final. This song comes precisely from that contradiction: knowing you have to let someone go and feeling that part of you refuses to open your hand.
Ya no te quiero is about a pain that won't leave however hard you try. About that need to put words to what you don't dare say out loud, not even to your closest friends. It's the attempt to close a story when you're still bleeding inside, when your heart hasn't received the order your head is giving it.
I like to think it isn't a song about forgetting. Forgetting is something else, it comes on its own and without warning. This is resistance. It's what you do in the meantime, while you wait for forgetting to arrive. And sometimes, when loving someone hurts so much, the only way to stay on your feet is to pretend you don't love them any more. To repeat it to yourself in front of the mirror, on the metro, before going to sleep.
That's why every line is double-edged. On one side there's the wish to convince myself. On the other, the obvious failure to manage it. The title is a sentence I say so that it becomes true, but which I still don't fully believe. And I think many people will recognise that feeling of saying something firmly while everything inside is trembling.
Who it's for
I'd dedicate it to anyone in that strange limbo of the aftermath. When you're no longer together, when you've already deleted the photos from your phone (or almost all of them), when you tell everyone you're fine, and in reality you're still checking whether they're online. That person knows exactly what this song is about.
Listen to it at night, unhurriedly, maybe with a glass of wine or a cup of tea. Not to wallow in the sorrow, but to give yourself permission to feel it. Because saying «ya no te quiero» is sometimes the first step, even if it's still a lie.