Song Lyric Sunday: Suspended

(Note: I wrote a terribly lovely and vunerable post. And then the internet went insane and it went missing. This an attempt to re-create it.)

Damn, I gave myself good writing prompts a year ago... (Or totally self-indulgent writing prompts? Eh, it could go either way. And aren't blogs by their very nature totally self-indulgent?)

I like Song Lyric Sundays because they give me a chance to ramble about why I like certain artists. Apparently I liked Tyler Hilton's music because I'm a sucker for tall, lanky guys. Awesome. That's not at all shallow.

Anyway. Today I want to talk about "Suspended" by Matt Nathanson whom I had never actually seen before I googled him to find that website so I like him for decidedly less shallow reasons than Mr. Hilton. Though. He does look kind of tall in those pictures...

I've only ever listened to Beneath These Fireworks, mostly because his other albums aren't available in Canada, but it makes me want to sob my face off sometimes. I may be completely off-base here, but I feel like this album is a song cycle, all of the songs are about the same girl. And being in the place where I am right now, I feel like I could so easily be that girl. (In the way that everyone identifies with songs. What? I'm aware that the songs aren't actually written about me. Whatever. Shut up. I'm 16 on the inside!)

Lyrics:

It's so easy, to forget that I'm lost
Spent all of my life
Waiting for answers
To lift me, to numb me, to define it all

So. A year ago, everything in my life changed. It's funny because I've moved almost more times than I can count, usually to and from Calgary so I learned really early on that you can never go home again. And yet, I never really expected that when I returned home from Ontario, everything would be different. Maybe that's because being away for school never felt permanent. Last year was a year of being in transition. And this year has been a year of being lost.

I think everyone feels that way when they finish university. A little. I hope.

But - I'm 24 and I have no idea who I am. I'm starting to think that I never did, I just knew what other people told me I was. There are some things I'm sort of good at, sometimes I feel sort of pretty, sometimes I feel like I'm almost good enough but there is absolutely nothing I'm great at, so what am I supposed to do? Maybe art has lied to me and there's actually no one who actually knows what they're meant to do, but I don't think I believe that. I know so many people in so many different fields who know exactly what they are supposed to do and are able to continue taking two steps forward and only one step back. They're passionate about it or they're great at it or maybe both but even if it's not both, that's okay. And maybe they doubt themselves - who doesn't? - but they still have a path. I've gotten so good at recognizing this and faking it that you'd never even guess that I'm lost.

And the things that I've done to try to define myself over the past year are things that shouldn't. At least, I hope they don't. I'm hoping that something else will come along that I can choose to define me and give me self-worth. I don't think I'm the girl I've chosen to be, though I also don't know if I'm the girl I was before.

You know that line in Titanic where she says that she feels like she's screaming into a void and no one hears her or even notices? Damn, I love that movie.

~*~*~

Semi-relatedly, I wish I had more friends who lived in the area of Calgary I do. Sometimes I just want to go out and make poor life choices but when everyone lives so far away it's hard to do that on a whim. Le sigh. Volunteers??

And, in lieu of poor life choices, I think I'm going to take myself for a freaking walk, yo!