Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.31

Right Now
Mary J. Blige

There's an old person in new clothes
She looks at me and smirks
An unseen beat drives a jive
I retreat
But she follows, beat with her
An incessancy
Viewed in glimpses
Unspeakably calm in face of my panic
Absurd horror film of the new millenium

Lyrics
Is this a breakup song? I mean, the words would make me think so, but in the music there's nothing of the melancholy of a loss, none of the triumph of an escape. It's not exactly joy, either, to my ear. It's more aggressive than joy, unless it's a purely spiteful happiness (this is honestly not an unbelievable proposition). But the words!

I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you right now
No, I won't play this game with you
I'm taking it back now, I'm turning it right round
My love won't be the same for you no more
My love won't be the same for you no more
No, I won't play this game

It has to be a breakup, or an ending, or a disaster of some kind. Which means this song's text is entirely inaccessible to me. I've never been on that end of a breakup. I've only ever been on the barrel end of a sudden terminus. What is about me that forced such an incredible cut? I mean, maybe you've got reasons, if you've done something similar. If you've ever acted as though a person didn't exist even when you saw them face to face on occasion, if you've ever avoided all contact with a person, if you've ever (when forced into contact) felt antagonism and fear--who knows? Maybe you had a good reason. Please, if you're at least metacognizant enough to be able to explain why you did so . . . maybe I don't need the explanation, but maybe it would help.
I know myself. I live in the thin liminal binding between egotistical asshole and codependent wretch. I know that neither is worth keeping up with after a relationship ends, and I know that if you've had someone treat you outside that interstitial, it's exhausting and condemning and terrible. I get that, really, I do. But sometimes I feel like nearly the entirety of humanity lives in that brief gap between self-obsessed and other-obsessed.
Maybe the feeling of this song, this triumphant abandonment, maybe it's genuine. I suspect that I cannot feel it without dread and guilt riving great gulches in what once was a smooth exterior.
It's a very fun to listen to, if we're honest.

Stephen
I guess I'm ashamed of everything I wrote, now that I've read your feelings about it. You're right, it's a breakup with clear delineation, it's not dependent on a thick paste of victimhood . . . it's an atypical breakup song. And it's probable that MJB is an adult who isn't coy with her partners. But after so much high school drama in college, I'm probably a little touchy. This is the attitude of a person who assigns themselves the moral high ground and walks away without considering the alternatives. Who lives like that? Who can be so confident that they're right?

Now that I've said it, I'm that person. I'm that confident, sometimes. Not about relationships, by a long shot, but--
I'm the trampling rhinoceros come to destroy your innocent opinions with my cold logic. I've done this about a lot of things. Well, cuss.