Life Is Solitary
That doesn’t mean you have to go through it alone
Life is solitary
Life is short
The womb protects us
Then expels us straight into the monster’s jaws
Life is short
Don’t get lost in the wrong battles
Don’t stay too long in the wrong places
Life is solitary
Don’t be the thing you hide from
Don’t let fear be the thing you hide behind
They’ll be no one else remaining if you do
My memory fails me
I’m not proud of who I was back then
I was looking for life
I was looking to get punctured and slain
I sought accidents
I sidestepped potentially useful embarrassments
Ran away from making decisions so I wouldn’t have to confront mistakes later on
Don’t get me wrong
This is no prelude to the end
This is no waltz around the problem, my attempt to make amends
From infancy to our dying days we are but a fraction of the potential we promised at conception
Before the cluster of cells became flesh
And like flesh, subject to wear and tear
I didn’t tear, my flesh knew no wear
I was protected from injury, from judgment
Walls high, bars set, lock ingested, body double-vested,
Heart stowed away so you couldn’t break it
Injury by the hands of others
I wouldn’t permit
I protected myself from the very life that I sought to be a part of
Hence, I’ve never been hurt by others
The only one who’s ever broken my heart is me
From a failure I became a success
Commended for my resilience
Congratulated for my persistence
I didn’t know that I had a choice
I thought it was fight or fight
Stick through until everything is right
From a success I became a cautionary tale
A grand poser hidden behind a magical veil
I lived through ineffable seconds of horror
Slammed the windows shut, blurred my vision from terrors full-grown
Combated with the whisky-scented air, trying to
win a game of solitaire that had spanned a year
The edges of my fear impaled anything that came near
I learned to swallow my wishes
I knew I couldn’t afford a few misses
I felt like I’d been granted three tries
Two were wasted for a lesser prize
The final one gave me butterflies
’Cause time is unyielding
Night can be grim when you have no one to talk to but yourself
I couldn’t jeopardize another chance for a meaningless romance
I told myself to summon patience
Beat dread with this painstaking but worthwhile cowardice
’Cause regret can meet you with a vengeance
And there won’t be others there to help fend it off
From a cautionary tale I put myself on Wholesale
‘At your service, anytime you call, I’ll be there’
That was my motto
I’d be your savior if it got me out of the grotto
I took other people’s punches
I took their failures as my own
I set myself to be their backbone
I opened the seals to thousands of unopened letters
Felt the pain concealed inside the words
Chewed them up, swallowed, and played nurse
Set myself to mend all those broken things out there
Took scissors and glue but that wouldn’t do
I couldn’t admit that my heart was broken too
At the end of the day, no one could be saved
’Cause there was no one to do the saving
All those that were lost,
were too busy being lost
to look for a way out of there
This was a case of arrested development
A difficult problem that I thought I couldn’t circumvent
Then I heard the thunder clap
And saw lightening set the way
The wind will pick up your spirit
Twirl it up for all the world to see
I can’t explain it
I don’t need to
When you feel it, you’ll know, too,
It’s the reason I still stand
Just because you’re not there yet, doesn’t mean you’ll never get there
Just because you don’t have it, doesn’t mean it’s not yours to have
Life’s simply telling you that there’s more lessons to be had
More battles to overcome
More love for yourself to be gained
And gifts, small and unimagined but worthy nonetheless
Life is solitary
Life is short
The womb protects us
Then expels us straight into the monster’s jaws
Life is short
Don’t get lost in the wrong battles
Don’t stay too long in the wrong places
Life is solitary
Don’t be the thing you hide from
Don’t let fear be the thing you hide behind
They’ll be no one else remaining if you do
