Jazzy Gold

You write about the distance that can develop between two people who once imagined growing up together. When you look at your relationship with your cousin now, what stands out most about that change?

I think the hardest part is that I can almost see the life she could have if she managed to break out of everything she’s stuck in. I know how much is in her, so watching her struggle and knowing I can’t do anything to change it is really painful.

We don’t really speak anymore, but there wasn’t some huge falling out or one specific reason for that. Life just kind of pulled us further and further apart. The weird thing is that the love doesn’t feel any different to me. I still love her so deeply, even though I’m not really part of her life anymore.

I think that’s what stands out most is that someone can feel just as important to you as they always did, even when the relationship itself doesn’t look anything like it used to.

The line 'Pinky promised we wouldn't end up like our dads' carries a lot of history. What were you both like as kids, and what did you imagine your lives would look like?

We were such goody two-shoes as kids, but also really dramatic in the funniest way. We’d literally get up in front of our class and force everyone to listen to us sing Adele. She always wanted to be a singer or do something creative, and I think we both had this really big idea that we were going to get out of our small town and make something of ourselves.

At the same time, we were really scared of becoming like the things we saw around us. Our dads smoked, so we’d promise each other that we’d never smoke, never get into drugs or drinking, any of that stuff.

I think the part that hurts the most now is that I did get out, and in a lot of ways she hasn’t been able to yet. We were these two little girls imagining this huge future together, and somehow our lives ended up going in completely different directions. I don’t look at that as me succeeding and her failing at all, it just makes me really sad because I know how badly we both wanted more for ourselves.

I can still picture us standing in front of our class singing Adele and making these tiny promises to each other, completely convinced we were going to grow up and do everything differently.

There's a difficult tension in the song between wanting to help someone and accepting that you can't make their choices for them. How did you come to terms with that?

I honestly don’t know if I’ve fully come to terms with it yet. I think part of me will probably always want to fix things for the people I love, especially when I can see how much they’re hurting.

For a long time I thought that if I just showed up enough, said the right thing or loved someone hard enough, eventually I could pull them out of it. I’ve had to learn that you can support someone, love them and want better for them with everything in you, but you still can’t make their choices for them.

I think writing “pinky promise” was part of me finally admitting that. There’s definitely a part of me that hopes the song might be some kind of wake up call for her, but more than anything I just hope she can hear it for what it is. It was written completely out of love. I hope one day she understands that and doesn’t hate me for needing to write it.

You make it clear that the song isn't written from a place of judgement. How important was it for you to recognise your own mistakes and different paths while telling this story?

That was really important to me because I never wanted the song to sound like I was looking at her life from some moral high ground. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, I’ve coped with things badly, I’ve hurt myself in different ways, and I’ve definitely had moments where my own life could’ve gone in a completely different direction.

We grew up around a lot of the same things, we just ended up dealing with them differently. I think that’s part of why I feel so much empathy for her. I can recognise parts of myself in the choices she’s made, even if our paths look really different now.

The song isn’t me saying, “look what happened to you.” It’s more me looking at both of us and thinking about how two people can come from such a similar place and still end up somewhere completely different. There’s a lot of sadness in that, but never judgement.

The song came from seeing someone you loved speak about themselves as though they'd already given up. How did that experience affect the way you thought about yourself and your own journey?

I think hearing someone I love talk about themselves like they’d already accepted that this was just going to be their life really broke something in me. Especially because we grew up together and, for such a long time, imagined that we’d both get out and build something bigger for ourselves.

It made me look at my own life really differently. I think there was a lot of guilt in realising that I’d managed to get out and start building the life we used to talk about, while she was still struggling so much. But it also scared me, because I know I’m not completely different from her. I’ve had my own dark periods, I’ve made bad choices, and I know how easily your life can start moving in a direction you never pictured for yourself.

I think more than anything it made me realise that I don’t ever want to give up on myself. Even when my life feels completely fucked, I want to keep believing there’s another version of it waiting for me. Hearing her stop believing that for herself made me realise how important that hope actually is.