Sing On

You can pour your heart out singing a song you believe in
That tomorrow they'll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway.

Back in October, when all the drama and depression were first starting, there were a lot of songs floating around in my head. There are always a lot of songs floating around in my head, but at that time in particular, I was very easily affected by the music and lyrics around me. There’s a song by the Dixie Chicks called “Top of the World” that I was listening to a lot around then. Quoth the Chicks:

There’s a whole lot of singing that’s never gonna be heard
Disappearing every day without so much as a word somehow
Think I broke the wings of that little songbird
She’s never gonna fly to the top of the world right now

That was how I felt a lot of the time – like my voice had been stolen. Like the flights I had taken and the heights I could have reached had been taken from me. Like life and circumstances and, yes, even sometimes people had beaten me down and taken my song. I was a songbird, and my singing was silenced, and my wings were broken.

It was pathetic and disgusting.

But even so, it was the truth of how I felt at the time. I feel it less now. I had realized for a while that my thoughts had been changing, but I hadn’t come up with a good parallel for that song and the way it had reached out to me back then. But in the car recently, I heard a song that I’ve known for years, but had forgotten about - it seems more fitting for the here and now. Quoth Martina McBride:

And with a broken wing, she still sings
She keeps an eye on the sky
With a broken wing, she carries her dreams
Man, you ought to see her fly

Yes, my wings have been broken. And maybe I won’t reach the top of the world – the places I could have gone, if I’d done things differently – but that doesn’t mean I can’t fly at all. And maybe my song is different – sadder, softer, just a little more real – but that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. The world is still large and full of possibilities – things I cannot even consider now. My life is still precious, and open before me, and sometimes I feel ready to embrace that.

Sometimes, I still sing.

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Day 7 of SaBloBoMo: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I heard about this book sort of idly through side conversation in a class one day, and it sounded so interesting that I just had to go find it. I rarely buy general fiction without knowing anything about the book, but I bought this one and never regretted it (well, okay, I regretted buying the hardcover version instead of waiting for the paperback, but that's different).

The Lovely Bones is written from the perspective of Susie, a young girl who has been raped and murdered; from Heaven, she watches her family and friends as they struggle to make sense of their loss and find her murderer. It successfully balances Susie's challenging adjustment to her new life (or lack thereof) with her family's dramatic changes as they search for meaning in the absence of sense. It is beautifully written, and heartbreaking in its poignancy.