Every so often...

[telaryn]

...you just need to clean out the mental crap. crevette and I were talking yesterday, and I mentioned about getting a playlist pulled together for the new laptop. Shawn Colvin's "Sonny Came Home" was on the radio, which got me thinking about another song that was kind of a theme for me in the mid-late 90's -- Paula Cole's "Me".


I am not the person who is singing
I am the silent one inside
I am not the one who laughs at people's jokes - I just pacify their egos
I am not my house, my car, my songs
They are only just stops along my way .
I am like the winter
I'm a dark cold female
With a golden ring of wisdom in my cave

CHORUS:

And it is me who is my enemy
Me who beats me up
Me who makes the monsters
Me who strips my confidence

I am carrying my voice
I am carrying my heart
I am carrying my rhythmn
I am carrying my prayers
But you can't kill my spirit
It's soaring and it's strong
Like a mountain
I'll go on and on
But when my wings are folded
The brightly colored moth
Blends into the dirt into the ground

Chorus

And it's me who's too weak
And it's me who's too shy
To ask for the thing i love
And it's me who's too weak
And it's me who's too shy
To ask for the thing i love
That I love

I am walking on the bridge
I am over the water
And I'm scared as hell
But I know there's something better
Yes I know there's something better
Yes I know, yes i know, yes i know

That I love
But it's me
And it's me
But it's me

Just one of those songs that really speaks to me. Along with Triumph's "Magic Power", Edie Brickell's "What I Am" and Emerald Rose's "Never Underestimate a Woman With the Goddess in Her Eyes".

Don't have a bunch of time before Robin gets off the mat (I'm at Choi), but it's amazing the number we can do on ourselves mentally and emotionally. It's almost like on some level we're programmed for self-sabotage.

Today was a good day. I'm feeling very balanced -- a feeling I don't get nearly as often as I like, but that I'm going to take and run with as long as I can.

Oh, and the Jason/Diane story has a working title -- "Convicted in Absentia".

Comments

[tiaralynn.livejournal.com]

I love that song. I haven't heard it in a long time... I'll have to dig up "This Fire". Thanks for reminding me of it.

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

:) No problem. I think I listened to it half a dozen times last night while I was writing.

Which is bad, actually, because with songs like that I tend to just stop and bask in the lyrics.

[http://users.livejournal.com/astriana_/]

I suspect you have no idea exactly how pertinent this is to me right this moment - and has been for the last few. For me the true question is: How do we pull ourselves out when we're busy beating ourselves into the dust?

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

What works for me is looking outward. We make a big deal about not living for "external validation", but sometimes we really are too close to the situation to be objective.

And before you say it -- yes, I know the biggest tapes that kick into gear at that point are "well, person X doesn't know the whole story. If they did, they'd agree with my assessment".

What you do at that point is start subverting the logic until the tape makes no sense.

I can give you endless examples from my own life -- but if you want to toss something out there that might be more relevent to what you're going through, I'll see if I can show you what I mean.

[http://users.livejournal.com/astriana_/]

The short version is that I used to truly excel under pressure and to stay positive, etc. Unfortunately, for the last several months, I seem to have "lost my Kaylee" and to fold up and disappear at the slightest provocation, beating myself to smithereens with guilt and "should have"s int eh process. On the rare occasion that I drag myself out of the funk long enough to get something done - usually because it is absolutely necessary and OMGRIGHTNOW! - I go into hibernation for days or weeks before I can muster enough composure to deal with anything else. All the time this is happening, I'm careening faster and farther down the spiral into the "Pit of Despair" - and only feeling worse and being harder on myself on the rare occasion that I take my head out of the sand long enough to look around.

I am now rambling and will hush up...