“In-Between Days” by The Cure is exactly how I feel right now. I’m caught in this space where half the time I feel so lost I can’t breathe, and the other half I feel like a fire has been lit underneath my skin and I want to run fast and far, burn everything, and start over. Sometimes the loss is unbearable. Sometimes it takes almost cutting my hands off to not reach out to him. But sometimes I’m okay. Sometimes I think I can get through this in-between-ness and be myself again.
I miss him like crazy. I hurt like hell. But, I’m getting up every morning. I’m making plans. I’m changing things. I’m creating. I’m angry. I beyond sad. I’m driven. I’m burning from the inside out. I’m moving and breathing and trying. This is me without you.
“In-Between Days” was one of the first songs I ever heard from The Cure. It played on KROQ and I’d recorded it on cassette after that first time, waiting for hours one night to hear it again. The Cure became one of my favorite bands soon after and stayed that way for years to come. There was a time when friends would tease that they always knew that it was a mixtape I made if it had a Cure song on it.
In some ways, this song, and The Cure were my goth gateway drug. They led me to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus, and beyond. Thank you, Robert Smith, for decades of goth-sensibilities, mixtape predictabilities, and so many songs – like “In-Between Days” – that I love.
“In-Between Days” by The Cure
from the Album, The Head On the Door (1985)
Song of the Day
“In Between Days” reminds me of my teenage bedroom and of playing it over-and-over, sometimes singing-a-long, sometimes dancing and spinning around, and sometimes writing overwrought, sad, soppy poetry into one of my composition books while it played.
It also brings back so many club memories. Dancing first at Cloud 9 at Knott’s Berry Farm, before I made it to the Hollywood underground scene, with clubs like Hot Lava, Helter Skelter, and Ground Zero.
“In-Between Days” was released in July 1985 as the first single off of The Cure’s sixth album, The Head On the Door. It was an international hit. In the UK, it was the band’s ninth chart single and their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit, while in the U.S. it was The Cure’s first single to reach the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at 99. It was a Top 20 hit in Australia and New Zealand, and also charted in several European countries. (from Wikipedia).
