I've been down, I've been downhearted, Babe...
"...I've been downhearted baby,
I've been down--I've been downhearted baby,
Ever since the day we met
Ever since the day we met
I've been downhearted baby,
I've been down--I've been downhearted baby,
Ever since the day we met
Ever since the day we met..."
Sometimes I have to wonder, why the hell I keep this journal, when it often sounds like a broken record of emo-esque heartache, heartache, heartache... It seems like I say the same things over just spinning my wheels without progress on this muddy street.
...Am I alive or thoughts that drift away?
Does summer come for everyone?
Can humans do as prophets say?
And if I die before I learn to speak
Can money pay for all the days I lived awake
But half asleep?...
To be honest, the only person I ever really write for is me. The only reason I bother to commit these things to paper--text, rather, is so I can yank them out of my brain and splatter them across a screen, where they can no longer continue to run amok in my head.
There are periods where I barely wrote anything, full stretches of months grouped together, and when I look back over them, all I can remember is blurry and empty, like I wasn't even thinking during that time. Just cruising on auto-pilot, the lights are on but there's nobody home.
I hate those periods, because it's not just that I didn't want to share things with people that I know have access to my journal, but it's like I literally had nothing to say.
...A life is time, they teach you growing up
The seconds ticking killed us all
A million years before the fall
You ride the waves and don't ask where they go
You swim like lions through the crest
And bathe yourself on zebra flesh..."
~ Primitive Radio Gods, "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand"
It's easy to tell when I'm feeling especially thoughtful though, I can have 2, 3, even 5 posts in a single day even. Even if some of them are taken up more by lyrics or quotations than my own writing.
I need music, as much as I need air to breathe or food to eat. I need music in the very center of my being, to feel, to see, even uncomfortable feelings like abject sorrow or the agony of loss. I still need them.
I remember a period of time where I stopped really listening to my own music, most of what I listened to was things Dilan liked--which, don't get me wrong, I like most of the same music.. but I also like more. He hated most of my stuff like Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Liz Phair, Fleetwood Mac, stuff like that. So I just... stopped, really pursuing my own tastes, but occasionally I would sneak a "secret" indulgence of Country Music while I was driving and alone in the car. It reminded me of home, even though I never really liked country music before, because Carolyn used to switch it on at work when she was the only manager on duty.
It was so weird (blatantly obvious?) that that time parallels so well with the time where I just... stopped thinking or being concerned with myself, or my needs. I mean, sure I was miserable, and I knew it, but I truly didn't really... Think about it. I just sort of accepted that that "this is how my life is," and "I don't deserve to be any happier." I actually have a past entry where I said that I was "afraid that no one would fit the qualities that I need," or that if, such a person really did exist, "I didn't deserve them."
It's like I needed music to remind me that there was more to life than the black-and-blue misery coursing through my veins. Or to paint out how dark and bleak it really was. Or maybe just to hear outloud, words that resounated so deeply within me, that I could finally be certain that my feelings were real.
"..Follow your bliss
It reads on my chest
I know I got it tattooed for a reason
Why can't I just hold it true?
'Cause I'm still crashing all the funerals
Of these people that I never knew (yeah)
I'm stuck in a coma
Stuck in a never-ending sleep
Some day I will wake up
And realize I made up everything
I shut the door and turn all the lights out
And listen to all the songs that the night shouts
They go something just like this
So
Go fill up a glass with tonic rocks and gin
And drink yourself to happiness..."
~ Senses Fail, "Can't Be Saved"
See what I mean?