It’s My Blog (And I’ll Cry If I Want To!)
Life, it seems, is full of moments. Good moments, bad moments, happy moments, sad moments. That I might be feeling optimistic and cheerful at four in the afternoon has no bearing on how I’ll be feeling at ten-thirty at night. I prefer to think of this as an intrinsic element of life, rather than a personal flaw. And, hell yeah, it’s easier to say… “Oh life’s like that,” than, say, “You’re such a hypocrite, John.”
At 4pm I felt really good. I had written two verses to the song. The dreaded song. They came out more personal than I expected. They ended up saying what I meant to say. (It seems silly to say that, as a writer, “I said what I meant to.” The truth is, especially while growing up, so much of my writing was deeply encoded with symbols and metaphors that probably meant nothing to anyone else.) I wrote an email to a good friend. I was explaining the song. I was talking about what I was doing. I was feeling good.
Now at 10:30pm I have gone into relative hiding, pretending to be “offline” to avoid people making demands on my time and (fragile) mental health. I look at a page of words. I have devoted a melody, harmony, lyrics, tears, sweat and time to someone who doesn’t care about me. The process doesn’t feel cathartic. It feels profoundly pathetic. Here I am carrying a torch, and trying my hardest to avoid using the word “fool” in a lyric.
I have been living with this “monster” for too long. The truth is even your friends don’t want to hear that you’re depressed. There’s nothing they can do for you. They don’t know what to say. It just leads to awkward conversation, or the cessation of conversation altogether! I should be over it. I should “get” over it. The truth is I want to know that somebody feels my pain. I want to know that somebody feels bad that I feel bad. Right now it feels as if I am completely superfluous; that, perhaps, if I were to disappear right now into the ether, no one would even notice. Infact some people might even be relieved. And I wonder if that is the reason I want to write this song: that someone might know I was here, that I hurt. Because I don’t want to believe that nobody cares. I don’t want to believe that the song’s inspiration could look at my lifeless corpse and feel nothing.
Sorry that you’re going through this. But I’m glad you’re getting it out. We’ve all been through rough patches, life altering events that seem to rip out our souls. But the thing I’ve learned from them is that 1) you do heal in time and 2) the healing can’t begin until you let your feelings out.
Write the song. Do the video. Post the lyrics. Do what ever you need to do to heal.
However, the reality of the matter is that you need to do this for you and not someone else. They may never see or hear the song. May never comment. May never care again for you.
That’s all right. Life is a journey. People come in and out for a reason, season, or a lifetime. Let no one discount the experience you’re going through – the emotions are real and necessary.
You’re kind of right in that I don’t know what to say to make you feel better, but you’re totally wrong in saying nobody cares about you.
I care. That is all.
Oh John, I’m so sorry for pestering you in regards to the website… i get so caught up in the excitement of things sometimes i forget that people have other things going on…
I agree with steve, Write the song, post the video, I know from personal experience, it helps to let it all out in a creative way, buts the emotion to good use.
thanks so much for the website john, and thanks for being a friend, As Rohan said, we do care.