Every Wednesday following dance class, my mom and I head to Panda Express—one of our two favorite vegetarian-friendly fast food places close to the dance studio—for a meal laden with chow mein and an animated conversation about the day’s class.
As we finish up our Panda in the dimly lit parking lot, I rummage through the plastic bag, picking up the extra napkins to uncover the fortune cookies. I am not one to believe in the fortunes that give predictions, but on this day, the fortune was oddly specific, feeling more like validation. I stuff it into my phone case (ironically one with mini pandas), where it serves as a constant reminder that someone else has felt this too.
This fortune sits with me the same way Gracie Abrams playing on blast in my airpods does, giving familiarity to thoughts and feelings I can’t place my words on. Here are three Gracie Abrams songs that validate my devotion to the Panda Express fortune, “your sensitivity is an asset.”
“I Told You Things”
With the gentle strumming of the guitar in the background, “I Told You Things” feels like quietly watching trails of water race one another on a rain-streaked window. This song captures the silent aftermath of being vulnerable, where you opened up to someone who once warmly held your textured hands, and it devolves into a wrong-colored stain on an otherwise untouched beige ceiling. Abrams turns overthinking into a physical yet intangible space, suggesting that being sensitive and vulnerable is not a mistake, but a tool that allows one to notice when familiar rooms have changed and to sit with that feeling, rather than rush to silence it.
“Where do we go now”
“Where do we go now” lingers in the same uneasy space of unnoticed endings as the “Last Time Theory,” which constantly resurfaces during my daily doomscroll. The quiet finalities that don’t get a push notification on your home screen. Like the last time you sat in one of those stackable dark blue school chairs that hid the years of student use or your last true goodbye to someone. “Where do we go now” captures the suspended and hesitant feeling of not knowing, stretching vulnerability outward, transforming the ceiling into a measure of emotional capacity and “reservations.” This song captures the never ending questions of becoming, turning them into a tender acceptance of stepping away without letting it rearrange who you are.
“Unsteady”
“Unsteady” pulls its listener into a nostalgic trance, much like driving past your old elementary school field where you attempted cartwheels, played pretend, and ran laps. Abram’s song vividly highlights the weight of being sensitive, where everything feels exposed and unstable. The instability and vulnerability is reflected in the shaky quality of Abram’s voice. However, her act of “staring at the ceiling” anchors the music and emotion, slows the tempo of the song, and unfolds into a source of comfort in the silence of the bounded four-cornered sky right above your bed. By admitting that “words seem to cut so much deeper” and pairing that with the hush of “a sort of funny, quiet feeling” that staring at the ceiling invokes, Abrams highlights sensitivity as an asset because it turns pain into perception—using those ceiling-staring moments not to spiral out and collapse inward, but to process, understand, and transform pain and fear into emotional clarity.