Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Lost in Winter

I started writing this song a year ago. That seems to be my phase, which makes sense. It does take time for the ideas to grow and mature.

Anyway, so this song was birthed out of the "good girl" complex a friend of mine explained to me. She was doing what everyone else in her family wanted her to do, and at one point was so exhausted she literally drove off the road. She was inexplicably unharmed and realized that she almost DIED trying to be a good girl and please everyone.

I'd been drowning in being a good girl. My grandfather had died, and instead of getting to grieve for him, I had to suck it all up and sing Danny Boy at his funeral without crying, un accompanied.

We moved to a new city to help Jen's Grandparents and try to get jobs since I'd had no luck for about a year in Boulder. Her grandmother took a turn for the worst within a month and died a few days before my 30th birthday (which is in December). The viewing was on my birthday, and I was conscripted to sing Jesus-songs at her funeral. I called some 'friends' for comfort and all they did was go off about a new house they were buying, and they were too busy to let me come over to do something fun and life-focused on my birthday.

My parents guilt-tripped me into going to church with them a week or so later, and I sat through the whole thing angry as fuck. I tried to sing along but the words in the carols were just so religious.

The next few months, the time I should have been using to look for a job myself, I spent remodeling the house of previously noted 'friends' who were really abusive. I kept telling myself that they were being mean, or rude, or manipulative because they were stressed about having their third child and didn't have a house to live in. They asked my partner and I to make food and be on child-care duty for the birth, so we didn't look for jobs for fear that we'd get hired and be unable to help. They were really good friends, right? We thought they were family. We were not "allowed" to drive farther than an hour away from their home for over a month in case the baby came. Who was weeks late, into May.

As time dragged on, as the snow came and went, as the sun came out more and more, I started hoping for the growing season. I couldn't wait to grow some veggies. Our Colorado season is short, so we have to set them out and in and out and in for months before it's warm enough to put them in the ground. I miraculously found a job at a garden center and began my own labor. I had a few three-day weekends that we could have gone camping, before the summer rush was on and time-off was just a joke. But we couldn't leave town because of the baby.

I had songs I was writing. I had a labor job. I had bills to pay and other people to 'help.' I was waiting for the paycheck, which was immediately used. I waited for the next one, gone too. The tomato plants we bought were looking pretty sick from the lack of sun due to the freak storms which took the apple and cherry blossoms from all the hopeful spring trees. One night, exhausted, and unable to leave town or get into the mountains for peace, dead-brown petals filling all the town's gutters, I felt like those little plants. I was yellowing and drooping from lack of sun and nutrients, having no stability of my own, no place to sink my roots.

And I remembered, Meme (Jen's grandma) had said to me, to us, "Girls, why are you here, hanging around the dying? Life is for the living. GO."

Life is for the living. Not for the dying. Not for the unborn. Not for giving to others and waiting to do anything for myself. Was I actually living?

Life is is for the LIVING.

Go.





Lost in Winter. Click to listen and Download for Free.

I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting for the living to die

I have been waiting for the unborn to live

I have been Lost in a single point on the Circle.


I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting for the sun to come out

I have been waiting for the money to come in

I have been inside, outside, moved around,

Hoping for solid ground


I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting to begin what I began

I have been singing songs I swore I’d never sing again

And Meme said, “Life is for the living.”


Oh Spring,

Did you get lost in the mountains

after the apples bloomed?

I did too.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, Beth you are an amazing and beautiful soul. We love you so much :))

    ReplyDelete