So, I spent the evening not-studying and showing people all the cool things you can do on a computer. Namely, I was showing the Sara next door that Sarah McLachlan's cds tend to have cd-rom things on them, and that the cd-rom things sometimes have videos. And so we were watching Sarah McLachlan videos and I was a little leery but I knew she'd like watching them so I thought I'd try and I thought maybe I'd gotten over it.... But I haven't. Good Enough was the first one we watched and my heart just sank and I had trouble breathing. Once in a great while I am capable of listening to the whole cd of fumbling towards ecstacy, but only by myself. I never realized how much harder it would be listening to just one song with someone else in the room. She's asked me before why I never listen to Sarah McLachlan and she always tells me she worries about me and Ani because the lyrics are all so angry, and I try to explain that Ani keeps me sane and Sarah McLachlan's dangerous, but she never got it. Why would she? I think she saw it some, tonight, and I tried to say (when she asked... to get information out of me you have to ask, I'll never volunteer information. (she says as she volunteers information. Yeah, well, you guys are in the internet so you don't count.)) Anyway, I tried to say that I occasionally go crazy and that Sarah McLachlan doesn't help, but it didn't come out right. Really, how can you say something like that and have someone understand? Because I was trying to say it in a way that I wouldn't give away too much, and it's not possible. And I can't give away too much, because it makes my heart stop even more. I once read the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and sat there thinking, "hey, that's me!" and I feel so stupid saying that because people who actually have ptsd seem to have been through something actually traumatic, and not just something traumatic in their mind. I'm whining again, I know. I'm so glad she didn't ask to hear elsewhere. I think I would've had to say no. Good Enough is as much as I can handle, really. I used to love that song. "it's not the wind that cracked your shoulder and threw you to the ground. Who's there that makes you so afraid, you're shaking to the bone? I don't understand, you deserve so much more than this." That was my favorite line. Because of the, "who's there that makes you so afraid?" line, because I was terrified and I had no idea why. And then she almost-whispers, "I don't understand you deserve so much more than this." and I would (in my journal) quote that line and say how much I loved the first part, and then write, "but I don't really deserve more, do I?" just to see "J.A." write back, "Of course you do." Because I believed her. I believed everything she told me, at least enough to believe that she really believed it. And that was enough for me. If she thought I deserved more, then I did. Right after that, on the cd, was the song "Mary" and there's a line in that that says, "with trembling hands, she reaches out, a stranger's flesh is offered" and I loved that line, because I always wanted to do that. Reach out, I mean. I think in a lot of ways I thought I already had. (just so you know how much I obsessed about this cd... I'm quoting the lyrics from memory, still, even though I haven't actually listened to the cd in almost a year, and then only once.) Hold on was playing one night, when "J.A." and I were sitting on the floor in the dark and she started crying. Elsewhere, of course, was our song. It was my favorite from the very beginning. One of the first times I had her over to my house, I showed her how to meditate to that song. I didn't know the word meditate at the time... but it involved sitting right in front of the cd player in an awkward position doing nothing but listening. She understood. I never did understand the song Ice cream. It was my least favorite. "and I would be the one to hold you down, kiss you so hard, I'll take your breath away, and after I wipe away the tears, just close your eyes dear..." I liked that line too. I loved the whole cd, but mostly, I loved those three songs- Good Enough, Mary, and Elsewhere. They're in that order in a row on the cd and I think from the first time I heard it I decided she understood. She was the first singer I ever found who understood. I added more after that. Sheryl Crow's "Strong Enough" was the main one. She understood in an enormous way. I mentioned that song here the other day, when Sarah (a different one, note the H) and Erin were in my room, they both said they liked it and then they sang the parts that don't really mean anything and missed the, "God I feel like hell tonight, these tears of rage I cannot fight, I'll be the last the help you understand" part. I loved when she said, "I'll be the last to help you understand." because that just made so much sense. I never helped anyone understand. Except "j.a." of course, and I didn't really need to help her. I heard that song for the first time one night when I was too scared to sleep and I was lying in bed in the dark with the radio on. It was right after I'd dozed off for a while, I woke back up and that song came on. Sarah McLachlan has a song on a little "Live" EP called "Home" that I don't think many people knew about. But it's about this girl who goes up on by a tree and cries and "she didn't think that there was anything wrong with wanting a life that she could call her own. How could I explain you would not want to hear. You wouldn't listen if I talked anyway, you were too weighed down by your own fear." That was pretty much my whole life right there. I was 13. Whoever wrote the Bonnie Tyler song Total Eclipse of the Heart understood too. "every now and then I get a little bit angry and I know I've got to get out and cry." "you hurt me more than I ever would have imagined. You made my world stand still. And in that stillness there was a freedom I never felt before." That's Sarah McLachlan too. "no matter what anyone says time doesn't pull you through, cuz there are nights when I still cry when I think of you. sometimes it swallows me in this space I feel inside, I think of how strong you were and it helps me to get by. And all the nights when you would come to me in my dreams, thought I was losing my mind but it's the sanest I've ever been." ...that's Soraya. I discovered her a little bit later. about the time I realized it wasn't ever going to really go away. I'm thinking I should stop this. People meet me and usually they've never heard of Ani (or if they have, they've never heard her music) and they meet me and realize all I ever listen to is Ani and they automatically jump to the conclusion that I'm angry. And I think some of them even care enough to wonder about me, that I'm that angry. But really, I'm not angry, I'm sane. In me, I think there's a continuum of anger to depression and without any help I'd just be all the way at the "depression" end. But with ani, she boosts me up closer to the anger side. Sometimes it's even just enough to put me at "neutral" and sometimes it goes over and I'm angry. But I can deal with anger. I can't get trapped in anger like I can in depression. I didn't even know the word "depression" when it first happened. I think anger in me is 500 times better than any other emotion. Anger means I'm alive, and I'm not passive. Depression made me passive. For months I went to school, went to classes, came back from school, and shut myself in my room with the door locked. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I turned the lights out and listened to Sarah McLachlan and cut myself. I was so angry at what was happening and I never told anyone. I never said a thing. I think because I thought I deserved it but mostly because I thought it didn't matter whether I said anything or not. It wouldn't change things. And no matter how many times I say it it still sounds like a cliche, but it was a spiral. (I'd never heard enough to know I was living a cliche when it happened, or I might have been offended.) I was constantly sick when I was little, especially 4-6th grades. I was in and out of the pediatrition's office, to the point that he sent me to a children's hospital for tests. And no one ever once noticed that I was never sick on ORBITT days (where I didn't actually have to go to school, it was the "gifted" program which I don't think accomplished much other than getting me out of school one day a week.) and they never noticed that I was more often sick on days when I had gym class. They did notice I was never sick during the summer, but they chalked that up to the weather. I wasn't just making it up, I was physically ill. They ran test after test and every time they did it showed I had a sinus infection. They told me I had chronic sinusitis and started testing me for allergies and they never once asked me about school or mentioned that there could be a psychological cause. But you know what? I've been out of school for three years now, and I am never sick. I live in a dorm, and I am the only person here who hasn't had a cold all year. I did have an ear infection in October... but really, I live in close quarters with five other people who are always sick, I leave here to go to classes where there are thirty other sick people in a small room with no ventilation. I should get sick, but I haven't. Why doesn't anyone ever tell you that being unhappy can make you sick? And why doesn't anyone ever tell you that there is such a thing as "depression" and you're not the only one but it's a treatable illness? And how can parents watch their twelve year old stop eating and lock herself in her room and not do something about it? They yelled and they screamed and I just got more and more convinced that they would never understand. Really, they never did. I tried to run away once. A police officer spotted me and brought me home at one in the morning. My parents hadn't known that I'd left. They spent most of the rest of the night sitting on the floor in my room trying to make me talk. The next day they sent me to a psychologist friend of my mom's. The third time they tried to take me I told them I didn't want to go, and they never brought it up again, except as a threat. ("if you're not going to eat maybe we'll just have to take you to the hospital where they'll make you eat.") yes, I'm still angry. I think when I was in therapy they kept trying to get me away from being angry at my parents, because I was the sick one, not them. It wasn't all my fault. And I would obsess some more, but I have a test at 9:30 in the morning and it's already after 1am. Moral: No more listening to Sarah McLachlan. Time trips are not good.