…it was actually about when you have some kind of toxic relationship to yourself, or to another person, for so long that it becomes your identity. Ev… - Mitski

People think I was writing it for a group of people, when actually I was writing about one person. The truth was, I loved this person so much, and us being from different worlds kept getting in the way.

The phrase 'Be the cowboy you want to see in the world' has been an inside joke between me and myself…I would always kind of say it to myself in situations where I feel like I'm sort of trapped in my own mind. Like, 'Oh, what would a swaggering, western movie cowboy do in this situation?'

In tenth grade—this says a lot about how developmentally delayed I was—I had in my mind that it was the proper thing for me to have a love interest. And you'd see in movies where two characters instantly see each other and are, like, I'm in love!, and then it just cuts to them on a date or interacting...A lot of my adolescence was like that. Me thinking I was doing the right thing by re-creating a movie scene that I'd seen but then realizing that's not how it happens in real life.