Crazy Baby

Joan Osborne sings it straight:

Here's The Thing

Complete and utter breakdown in the middle of a movie that triggered me, right? Today? Zilch. Some anxiety about going to the class on being your own defendant for a bankruptcy suit, which would probably cause quite a few people anxiety, but otherwise, nada. Course, the extra dose of Klonopin could be helping with that. As soon as I feel The Nerves coming on, I pop my mid-day pill. It seems to work quick enough, or so my mind thinks.

But some days, like today, I'm still amazed at all the fuss, the taking of pills, the two sessions a week of therapy. I feel -- really feel -- that I could handle this on my own if I'd only pull myself up by the boot straps and be brave. And get this, of all the things I remember today when writing about this, I remember a random Dolly Parton song I caught while changing channels past CMT:

"A girlfriend came to my house
Started cryin' on my shoulder Sunday evening
She was spinnin' such a sad tale
I could not believe the yarn that she was weavin'
So negative the words she had to say
I said if I had a violin I'd play."

And that's why we have therapists. Because I mean, truly, who wants to listen to such a person. Waiter, pity party for one please, with some cheese and whine to go with it. I'd certainly rather belong to Our Lady of Piss and Vinegar and show a little more backbone. Sometimes I wonder how much of the mental illness is what impairs me and how much of it is my grief over the diagnosis. In time, the mental illness I can manage, and God knows, I'll get over the grief.

Today's Playlist

What About Everything -- Carbon Life

In search of some rest, in search of a break
From a life of tests where something's always at stake
Where something's always so far
What about my broken car?
What about my life so far?
What about my dream?
What about.....

A Girl and Her Horse -- Carbon Leaf

And away she rides,
To the great beyond.
You can wave goodbye –
To a girl and her horse
With a bond you can't deny.

Not Only Numb -- Gin Blossoms

In the shade below the eaves
Think I could chain smoke anything
Im not only back, Im not only numb
When the air at home is thin
Getting out, then looking in
Yeah she knows, she knows, she knows
It aint awful hard to tell
What its like, my little hell
Yeah she knows, she knows, she knows.

Toy Soldiers -- Carbon Leaf

We find the people of our dreams
We find that they're not what they seem
I've learned that people come and go
I've learned that families break and grow
Toy soldiers brave away those tears
Toy soldiers hope for better years.

The Riverflow -- The Levellers

Life goes on and round we go and words can kill these things I know
Often you cut me, deeply so, but on the river flows.

[ . . . ]

But I still remember the day you said
That the river flowing through my head
Would take me far or leave me dead
And all you said was true .

Stop and Stare -- OneRepublic

Stop and stare
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared
But I've become what I can't be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you're 'here' not there
And you'd give anything to get what's fair
But fair ain't what you really need
Oh, can you see what I see.

Follow Through -- Gavin DeGraw

So since you wanna be with me
You'll have to follow through
With every word you say
And I, all I really want is you
You to stick around
I'll see you everyday
But you have to follow through
You have to follow through.

Work Song -- Dan Reader

I've got all the fucking work I need
I've got all the fucking work I need.

Studying Stones -- Ani Difranco

I am out here studying stones
Trying to learn to be less alive
Using all of my will
To keep very still
Still even on the inside.

Life Got in the Way -- Sister Hazel

And I wanted you so much
Just like I do right now
I wanted us to be the one the poets write their books about
I wanted it to last
I wanted to grow old
But life got in the way.

Over My Head (Cable Car) -- The Fray

I never knew
I never knew that everything was falling through
That everyone I knew was waiting on a queue
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth
But that's how it's got to be
It's coming down to nothing more than apathy.

One Green Hill -- Oysterband

It might he tears of laughter,
It might be tears of rage
You hate it and you love it
And it rattles at your cage
My people are survivors, living in the cracks
Whatever bad luck hands them,
They keep on coming back.

What was Wrong -- Storyhill

Roll the window down
Turn the car around and get the hell outta town.

What Day Is It?

More and more, I'm losing track of time: day, date. I have to ask Jb, "Is it Wednesday?" There's no reason for me to know. I have to use gmail calendar to send me reminder e-mails for appointments I have to make, except when I forget to put my appointments on gmail calendar. In the interim, I sit here, sometimes I take my morning meds, sometimes, like today, I forget. I smoke. I sleep. I listen to Carbon Leaf and Barenaked Ladies. I eat because I should. I haven't cooked in a few days. Just couldn't be buggered to do it. Care so little about things these days. Slept the entire day away yesterday. The entire day.

I got my stimulus check, still flapping in the wind over waiting to receive my medical assistance packet, running out of meds with no money or insurance to get them, and all of it, good and bad, I couldn't care less. (And to all those linguaphiles out there, "could care less," "couldn't care less," that's right, both work. Sarcasm is a wonderful thing.) Are we catching the drift of my mood? Indeed, I do believe we are. (Snarky is up there with sarcasm in my book.) I can't get through making this goddamn list for the grocery store. I can't do it. It's shoddy at best. How have I managed to stretch $100 for two weeks of food for two people? I am fucking clueless this week. I'm up to $110 on only 8 dinners and breakfast for the weekend. My mind will not focus.

And Jb's killing me last night. He's nagging me to go out, take walks, exercise because I'm out of shape from sitting around the house. Might as well call me fat on top of it. Then when he's all, "No, just, you sit home all day and we eat crap." Newsflash: you eat crap. You eat freakin' honey buns for breakfast and McDonald's or 7-Eleven hotdogs for lunch. What do I eat? Freakin' Special K and an apple during the day. A South Beach Diet granola bar. You've got to be kidding me. Of course, he works all those calories off. Yeah, he works manual labor, and I'm sure that helps him, but he can't pull the "we eat crap" card because I, at least, try. And you know what bites rhinos? I'm still not losing weight.

In a complete fit of pique, I went out and walked this morning. I hate exercise. I have always hated exercise. My body is not build for it. Never has been. I swear to god I'd love to be one of those people you see every weekend, biking, running, sweating off every goddamn thing they eat, but I'm not. I can't even begin to fathom that kind of dedication and commitment. My commitment is focused elsewhere. My cheating days, my days of blithe duplicity are through since Jb. I don't lie. I don't cheat. I don't look for that rush that goes with the chase. And I used to. God knows I used to before him. And sometimes I miss it. The rush, the high of it.

I wonder, sometimes, if that's what it's like for people with bipolar? I went years in which I was overly sexed, constantly trolling, but it was never the sex, never the actual act, that was satisfying. It was the chase, the knowing how to play a scene, or a person. And that, I know, I've had since I was little. I have always known what to be for a person. I would make a game out of being exactly what someone else needed to hook them, then get bored with the game, and the person. It was the challenge, the testing of myself, like sitting down to get a 4-hour tattoo to see if I was "man" enough to take the pain. It may not be "conventional" self-mutilation in the world of the mentally ill, but there was something freeing in the pain it brought on and the way it felt to feel something, and to master it. Reading things like that, I can think: yeah, that's fucked up.

Snap

Just like that. I'm standing at the kitchen sink, shelling shrimp, lost in despair, and singing Roseanne Cash's "Bells and Roses" in my head:

Everything was mine
But it's long stripped away
Will you love me if I'm naked
Or as silent as a grave.

If you see who I really am
Will you still wanna stay
There's a danger in this love
And I want to be that brave.

Bells and roses
A sign of departure
But I love them just the same
Bells and roses
A sign of survival
On the door into this pain.

Jb comes home in a dark, snappish mood. Suddenly, I'm seven again, and my mother is raging at me, and there's no perfection I could ever achieve that would ease her pain. Because, like me, she's mentally unstable. And when Jb lashes out at me, I curl inward, go quiet, and the same thoughts play over and over: Maybe if I were sane, maybe if I were beautiful, maybe if I were the right size, the right shape, the tv girlfriend, the perfect girlfriend. Maybe then, he'd be happy with me. Maybe I would do something right, and I wouldn't be repeating stanzas of songs over and over and over while the water runs in the sink:

Now I'll go in if you say I must
But I'd rather let it go
There are people I will never trust
And things that I can't know

Kiss you 'til we turn to stone
Or fight you 'til we're blind
But you love me when you're left alone
And it makes me wanna die

Bells and roses
Wake up the senses
To remind me who I am.

And I'm reminded: I am flawed. I am broken. The trigger is like a switch, my mood like night and day. And I can't let the pain or the fight go.

Lost

There's a Firefly quote that's coming to mind today:

Inara: (to Simon) You're lost in the woods - we all are, even the captain. The difference is he likes it that way.
Mal: No, the difference is the woods are the only place I can see a clear path.

I feel like I'm lost in the woods these days, like I can't see my clear path. I stumble around my days, the apartment, looking for things to do, but unable to focus enough to do them. Jb's on my case again about not doing anything around the apartment other than cooking, bills, and groceries. These days, that's a lot to me. It's difficult enough for me to sit down and write up a list of groceries for 13-14 days worth of meals, but now that our budget's so tight, I have to add in the math, the coupon/circular, the adjusted cost, how many meals I can stretch one pound of meat. I know useless things, like eggs cost $2, milk $3.50, butter $4.50, cheese $5, unless you find a 2 for $6 sale. Sales on meat are deceiving, and unless you get there early, they're gone. It takes me all day to create a list.

I'm also lost as to what to do with myself. I once saw a clear path: Master's in Writing, writer. Then that diverged and I threw a possible PhD in Rhetoric in there, afraid I couldn't write. Then even that branched off to library work, my job at the library downtown, thoughts about a Master's in Library Science. But every time I saw a clear path, it split on me, until I had no path, only the woods closing in around me, and the knowledge that I was scared and unhappy. Now, I've lost everything: all direction, any clear path. And shouldn't that be freeing? But now I'm pigeonholed: "unstable," "bipolar," "irrational," "emotional," "depressed," "anxious," "unemployed." It's a loss of control and power, and I'm floundering. I can't see the tress for the forest.

I re-read those first two paragraphs, and they don't even make sense to me. Everything is disjointed. I'm starting to sleep more, later. Napping. I am swinging back down into a depression. In one of McMann's web pages he talks about going into the doctor to talk about his moderate depression, or his major depression, or the minor depression on top of his major depression, as if depression were a house of blocks that could be built. It's like a Dave Carter song:

One fine morning when my ship comes in
Gonna pack my fortune, take it home again
Stack my sorrows like stones until
I've built me a mansion on a high, high hill.

Depression is so full of metaphor. And sometimes I wonder if that isn't why while depressed and even manic, I've read that so many of us turn to music, poems, lyrics, like magpies, constantly murmuring others words in our heads, over and over, as if they could speak for us when we can't even speak for ourselves. It's like the butterfly in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn:

You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't seem to keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.

And this is where it begins to get tragic for me. This whole post--useless. Rambling. Incoherent. I can't remember my point, I can't remember my metaphors, all I hear in my head are lyrics, poignant quotes, and all I feel is this upwelling need for meaning, somewhere, somehow. Sometimes I think the only thing that mattered to me was the stint I spent teaching. Peter S. Beagle again:

Only reason I've lasted this long is I had this stupid job teaching beautiful, useless stuff to idiots.

And what writer would depend on every other writer to supply her own words? But I can't use them now, and I fumble. Everything is subject-verb-object with a conjunction thrown into the mix, usually the same conjunctions. So I might as well end this with one last quote from The Little Hours by Dorothy Parker:

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

And that's my mind these days. That's me.

Running: An Essay in Five Parts

I

"I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town.
It hovered in a frozen sky,
then it gobbled summer down.
When the sun turns traitor cold,
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row,

I get the urge for going,
But I never seem to go.
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown;
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in."

Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"

Spring and Fall always bring The Runaways. But other things can trigger them: a song, stress, a show on tv, an argument, lack of sunlight and activity, anything that overwhelms me emotionally or physically. Jb has told me more than once that he finds it hard to understand me because I don't let things go. But for me, it's not that I don't let them go, or that I don't want to; it's that I can't. The wanting, the emotion, the physical embodiment of that emotion, and all I have is the thin layer of my skin to keep it all in. And sometimes it sleeps, and sometimes it wakes, and when it wakes, it starts off with a soft whimpering, then a mewling, then a bawling, until with tiny fists, it's battering for my attention, to do what it would have me do, and I know this: by now, I am half mad with the need to be up and gone. Half crazy with the itching of it, as if it's a rash you'd scratch and scratch until you were bleeding, and still not care that you were. All that matters is the itch, and somehow, you have to quiet it.

II

"Now the warriors of winter,
They gave a cold triumphant shout,
And all that stays is dying,
And all that lives is gettin' out.
See the geese in chevron flight,
Flapping and racing on before the snow.

They got the urge for going,
And they got the wings so they can go."

Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"

When I'm stuck, when I can't up and go, whether for lack of money, a job that ties me down, responsibilities to some Other, I become claustrophobic. The world closes in around me, trapping me on all sides, squeezing in on me until the walls of the world have locked me in, and I know I am dying, and that everything around me is dying for lack of air. Madness to go is screaming and pushing at a vacuum-sealed vault it can't escape. But sometimes, blessedly, it does, and when I had my first taste of adulthood and freedom, when I had access to money and means, I ran away, desperate for the running. Even as a child, I stood, face pressed to the glass windows of an Oasis in Illinois, watching the cars speeding by below, and envying them with a hunger a child shouldn't know. And even now, there's nothing I like better than being on an open road, going somewhere, going anywhere, the allure of truck stops and rest areas foreign and enticing, a mere stopping point on an exodus of Biblical proportions. And that's what it always feels like once I break away: as if the world was made for only me, and only I can truly appreciate it. What was dull and dingy is now Technicolor in my world, and the trees flash by in their glowing blur, and I count hawks, but never the miles.

III

"I'll ply the fire with kindling now.
I'll pull the blankets up to my chin.
I'll lock the vagrant winter out and
I'll fold my wandering in."

Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"

I haven't been able to be up and gone in nearly three years, and it's a bit like going cold turkey. When the madness takes hold of me, I lock it down, repress it. I learned early as a child that society and mothers expect quiet children, so I kept it all in, as the Beautiful South song goes. And then, free of home, I began to let it all out, acting out as I never could when I was young. In college, though, everyone ran away, and they called it Spring Break. So, there was Cancun where I couldn't be bothered to be dragged around the markets and the bars, where I maxed out my credit card to become a certified scuba diver, leaving my friends to drink themselves merry or stupid. Every day, Klaus ran us 5 miles out and 150 feet down, and all that mattered was the running. And there was the time I met my husband, flying into the unknown with $100 in my pocket, and no guarantee this boy I'd met online would be there at the gate. When I finally married, I could count the times I ran away on two hands. There was the cold feet of my engagement, the sudden trip up to Milwaukee, and my best friend whispering that he could never made me happy. And there was my bachelorette party: a trip up to Madison, Madtown, me and my best friend and a toilet that wouldn't work.

IV

Of course, once I was married, there was the money, and Saugatuck, MI. Something there staved off the hunger longest, and I went back, again and again, staying in a hidden cottage off the main street, set up in such a way that the craziest of travelers could pretend to set up house there, behind the wine store, and buy plum wine and cream sherry, and walk down the street for Framboise at a British pub or peanut butter soup at the coffeehouse. Saugatuck called to me in such a compelling way that I once drove through a blizzard to get there, spinning out six times on the Michigan freeway. And then there was the summer, when Saugatuck was just a starting point for a week-long birthday run up to Petosky, where I was determined to camp, alone, in the state park, then further up to Mackinaw to spend my birthday with wine and chocolate covered strawberries in a claw foot tub, then further still to the Upper Peninsula and a town called Paradise that had one hotel, and one restaurant, and a convenient store that never stayed open. Dar Williams sang "Traveling Again (Traveling I)" the whole drive up:

"Have I got everything? Am I ready to go?
Is it going to be wild, is it gonna be the best time?
Or am I just a-saying so-o-o-o? Am I ready to go?
What do I hear when I say I hear the call of the road?

I think it started with driving.
More speed, more deals,
More sky, more wheels,
More things to leave behind.
Now it's all in a day for the modern mind.
And I am traveling, again,
Calling this a ghost town, and where is the heartland?
And I'm afraid, oh, was there any good reason, that I had to go?
When all I know is I can never come back.

Traveling, I made a friend.
He had a trouble in his head.
And all he could say's that he knew that the bottle
Drank the woman from his bed, from his bed.
He said, "I'm not gonna lose that way again."
But sober is just like driving.
More joy, more dread,
someone turns her head,
And smiles and disappears.
He's gotta take it like it is, and it goes too fast,
And he is just like me, caught in-between.
No sage advisor. Does weary mean wiser?
And someday will I sing the mountains that carried me away
From home and hometown boys like you?

Yeah, but what about us? Was it really that bad?
Oh, it's hard to believe I want a highway road stop
More than all the times we had, on little dirt roads.
What am I reaching for that's better than a hand to hold?

It really was about driving.
Not fame, not wealth.
Not driving away from myself.
It's just myself drove away from me.
And now I gotta get it back, and it goes so fast.
So, I am traveling again.
Sitting at the all-nite, picking up a pen.
And I'm afraid, oh, was there any good reason
That I had to go? When all I know is I am all alone again.
And you are the ghost town, and I am the heartland.
And I can say, oh, that's a very good reason
That I had to go, but now all I know is I can never come back.
And I will never go back."

I made it up to Whitefish Point on Dar Williams that summer, to see the bell of the Edmond Fitzgerald, and everything that was mystical and new, from the way Gordon Lightfoot's "The Edmund Fitzgerald" began playing softly over the museum's speakers right as I stepped up to view the remains of the American lake freighter, to the way I lived out Stan Roger's song, "White Squall," by touring the Soo Locks along the Canadian borderline. It was the summer of my greatest Runaway, and everything shined clear as Lake Huron.

V

"Baby, let me set you down.
You look so troubled, and I think I know.
Just when you think you've come around,
There you go.

Now, I know the business of the heart,
And it'll get you anyway it can.
You need someone to walk with in the dark. Well,
I'm your man."

Shawn Colvin, "Trouble"

And then there was Jb, who caught me up when I ran away to Knoxville -- and from my marriage. There had been other boys who had tried to catch me, and some boys that I had tried to catch. One even spoke about me as if I was a bird in the hand, ready to fly at the slightest provocation, and at the time, he was more right than he knew. But Jb caught me and twirled me around and set me back down on my feet, and for the first time in ten years, someone insisted I stay. And there I was: in a relationship with a man who would not tolerate my runaways, who claimed we were "in this together," and strangely enough, something in me sighed, as if I suddenly realized that all that running had left me exhausted and footsore. And that should be my happy ending. But the whirl of bipolar never quite goes away, and there are nights, like last night, watching Firefly, cowboys in space, laconic and always on the move, that brought the Runaways back. And the move is closing in around me, suffocating me, so that there is no air, no air. I can't breathe. And all I can think of is a run to the water.

But Jb knows how to deal with my runaways. I'm not sure he knows that he knows how to do this thing, but like a dog kept on a short leash, because of bills or poverty, he makes it possible for me to slip off that leash, if only for an hour or two, and he lets me run. Short trips into the "country," long drives to nowhere and anywhere that a quarter of a tank of gas can get us. And we roll the windows down and turn the music up, and I'd put my head out the window and push my face up toward the sun, just to feel the warmth and the wind, if I didn't think I'd look as crazy as I sometimes feel. But we sing along to every song we know, and we sing loud, and off-key, and we shoot each other laughing looks, and for that little while, I finally feel unfettered and free, and miracle of miracles, Jb's saved me from myself.

7:15 a.m. Triggers

One of the things I've begun to worry about is the possibility of a downward trend. The more I've gone over my past in my mind, trying to find the truth of my diagnosis, the more I've seen trends. Example? I get the Runaways in spring and fall. And my triggers tend to be major life events: going to college, switching my major, leaving college, getting married, moving, new jobs, buying a house, leaving graduate school, moving out of state, separating from my ex, beginning a new life with a new boyfriend, my father's illness, death, loss of a job.

Jb and I move in one week. Moving is always stressful for me, especially now when my motivation is low, and it seems a monumental task to get all of our junk into boxes and out of here. I'm worried it'll trigger something, send me up into a hypomania, where I couldn't be more thrilled with our new place, everything is wonderful, everything is fabulous! Or it could send me down into depression, where everything is new, everything needs to be learned over. There's no nearby store I can walk to, all the bus routes are different, a less than easy commute to the metro, everything is strange, and there I'll sit, without a job, without t.v. or internet for days because Comcast screwed up, surrounded by boxes I've no idea what to do with.

I think I'll be thrilled at first, a new start, a fresh apartment: hardware floors, white light coming from three windows, a bright new world. And no one loves a fresh start like me. I feel the need for them periodically, a sudden irrepressible urge to pack it all up, throw it all in, and start over, as if I could outrun my problems, my moods, my responsibility. Build a new life, rebuild myself, find my better self, one who doesn't screw up, one who doesn't mess things up. A better relationship, a better me, a better, brighter look on life. Like Annie Gallup says, "Anything Is Possible (Reprise):"

It was a phone booth in the middle of the Midwest
It was raining like the devil. I was depressed
I watched a pickup truck slowly float by with its hazards blinking
Windshield wipers slapping, I said, "I keep thinking
If I can hold it all together just one day maybe two
It'll all make sense and I'll believe it's really true
I wish I could take comfort in steady slow improving
But I'm scared most of the time. I don't feel safe
Unless I'm moving"
Ooh, yeah, anything is possible

Too much of that rings home: "I keep thinking: if I could hold it all together, just one day, maybe two. It'll all make sense, and I'll believe it's really true. I wish I could take comfort in this steady slow improving, but I'm scared most of the time. I don't feel safe, unless I'm moving." That's the depression, the Runaways, and my frustration with the long haul of recovery and meds. It's all there in one verse. And I don't know why, suddenly, my head is full of verses and lyrics, poems and lines. I've read in a couple of blogs that bipolar patients seems caught up in music, poems, latching onto lines the way they latch onto sanity, repeating things over and over in their mind. When I began this blog, all I could think about was Dorothy Parker's poem, "The Veteran:" "Inertia rides and riddles me," repeating that one line over and over. Inertia rides and riddles me, inertia rides and riddles me, inertia rides and riddles me. There's something compulsive in that, and something delusional in the way I put so much emotional investment into lyrics and lines, as if they could speak for me when I'm too befuddled to find the words myself.

7:45 p.m. Up and Down the Merry-Go-Round

It can be the best day one minute, then one song -- one song -- and my eyes are burning, my heart's aching, and something in my stomach turns sour. I want a cigarette more than life, and even then, the tears start to well up.

Early in the day, Jb and I drive out to Cracker Barrel. All the way there and back we listen to country, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, my music, and sometime in the last few weeks, Jb's bothered to listen to some of it, has learned to appreciate some of the songs. It means so much to me that the car flies down the highway, the wind blows in the windows, and everything is green, lush, flowing. And I'm happy; I'm content. Nothing sparkles, the colors don't glow vibrant, so intense they light up my heart, and the pure feeling, the feeling of the moment doesn't overwhelm, doesn't fill me to the brim, not like it used to. And I miss it. The day has been beautiful. I recognize that, appreciate it, but I miss the ecstasy of it. I miss the unnatural high.

We come home, and suddenly, I can't stand being here in the dark when the day's so beautiful. I get antsy, something beneath my skin starts to itch, for the sunlight, for relief. Waiting on Jb, I'm surfing YouTube and I'm watching some Firefly montage to "Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen, a song I've never heard before, and it hits home unexpectedly:

There ain’t no reason things are this way.
Its how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.
Preachers on the podium speakin’ of saints,
Prophets on the sidewalk beggin’ for change,
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape, cursing my name.
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same,
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing,
You can spend your whole life workin’ for something
Just to have it taken away.
People walk around pushing back their debts,
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets,
Talking ‘bout nothing, not thinking ‘bout death,
Every little heartbeat, every little breath.
People walk a tight rope on a razor's edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons.
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence.

There ain't no reason things are this way.
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway.
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

Prison walls still standing tall,
Some things never change at all.
Keep on buildin’ prisons, gonna fill them all,
Keep on buildin’ bombs, gonna drop them all.
Working your fingers bare to the bone,
Breaking your back, make you sell your soul.
Like a lung that’s filled with coal, suffocatin’ slow.
The wind blows wild and I may move,
The politicians lie and I am not fooled.
You don't need no reason or a three piece suit to argue the truth.
The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes,
Chaos and commotion wherever I go, love I try to follow.

Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

There ain't no reason things are this way
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.

It brings me down to a level I haven't been at for almost two weeks now. I'm ready to cry. I can't understand the meaning of it all, and everything seems momentary: this too shall pass, this too shall pass. But no one ever acknowledges that also means that this happiness, that passes, too. And we're left on the up and down of a merry-go-round, holding tight to a pole, sometimes brave enough to reach for the brass ring, but mostly so frightened that all we can do is hold on tight and close our eyes and wait for the world to stop.

The worst is that I remember the hospital again. I remember how faithful Jb was, coming every night for that single hour they allowed visitors, and twice on the weekend. Every time he came, and when he left, the girls in the ward made such fun of me: "You know he loves you; you can see it in how he looks at you," "Oo, J-----, hug me, too!" Even the nurses, one of them noting how'd come in the middle of the night to bring me something when I couldn't, and hadn't, slept for three nights in row. She told me if he didn't so obviously love me, she might have a go at him.

Half the women in ward sat in group and talked about love, failed relationships, divorce, and every single one of them got a sort of hungry look when Jb was with me, as if they'd give their selves for something, for someone, to look at them like that, to make life more bearable. And all I could think, swallowed by the deep water of depression and lost to the currents of my own thoughts, was that love couldn't fix me. I had the perfect boyfriend; he loved me, was there for me, supported me in ways I'd never expected anyone to support me. But love couldn't fix me.