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When I was a kid, my outdoor playtime frequently ended with impressive wounds. Getting the wound was one thing, and the often massive scab that would form later was another. Big ones shaped like the state of Texas could last a couple of weeks, and my mother always said the same thing: leave it alone. It won’t heal if you keep picking at it.

I stood in my bedroom many years later looking out to the street in a quiet California suburb, and I was thinking of a very painful middle school-style betrayal that I thought I was too old to experience, but that hurt terribly. I realized that I was still picking at it even though plenty of time had passed to start leaving it behind. My mother’s words rang in my head and became the seed for this song.

In addition to songwriting, lead vocals, and writing the harmony vocals, I played acoustic guitar and performed backing vocals on this song. Kenny Schick, my producer, also sang backing vocals and played or programmed all of the other instruments. Kenny recorded his parts at Basement3Productions in Boulder Creek, California, where I also recorded my vocals and acoustic guitar parts in February 2016.