Day 4 - A song that makes you sad

Oh god, it's on youtube

As with happiness, there are songs that make me sad because I associate them with something -- I have bit my lip and fought back tears at hearing Backstreet Boys songs on the radio, and no it's not because I am that aesthetically committed to dislike of boy bands that it makes me cry), but there is a song that makes me sad even though my associations with it are quite good: I first heard it soon after I met Andrew.

And that's a bloody good thing, because if I'd heard it when I was still single, it might have driven me round the bend.

A little while ago
My mother told me
Jesus loved the world
And if that's true then
Why hasn't he helped
me to find a girl
And find my world

This is the dream, of the title and the chorus: to fall in love.

The song exists in some later, more polished form, and that one hardly leaves me full of the joys of spring, but it doesn't make me sad like this one does. His breaking voice and the simple, plodding piano chords (which always sound wobbly to me, on this recording) convey perfectly what he says in the chorus: "it haunts me so."

It haunts me too. such a small, simple thing that manages to go from "time for supper now" (and the word supper, which my family use but no one else in my life really, so it is very evocative of all the complicated heartwrenchingness of childhood for me) to stars and God.

Andrew's said of Brian Wilson that a good artist makes you think "she's expressing what she feels" and a great one makes you think "she's expressing what I feel"; he thinks Brian Wilson is a great artist, and on the strength of this song alone I would agree, that's what it does for me, it expresses something I feel (not that I am that desperate to fall in love, but there certainly was a time that I still well remember, when I yearned for that kind of connection to the universe because I felt it was so completely lacking from my life) that I didn't even have words for, and this is why it gets to me so much.

It's not so bad now actually. But I first realized this song's power over me in the middle of one night, a seeming long time ago now, when I was lying next to a peacefully sleeping Andrew, but I wasn't getting any sleep and it didn't help that this song was going through my head, unbidden, out of nowhere. Let me tell you: it is especially ill-suited to the dark hours of the soul, the low blood-sugar times, when the world is quiet and you feel it's just you and the Universe. And the longing, the aching in this song, seemed to fill my mind and even my body, and I lay there with silent tears streaming from my eyes, not wanting to disturb Andrew, as after all there wasn't a thing wrong with me, I remember distinctly feeling utterly fine, it was just this song...

I'm better now. I listened to it a couple of times while I was writing this (pleased if shocked to find the demo version on youtube) and it didn't make me that sad. In case you were worried.

Day 4 - A song that makes you sad

Oh god, it's on youtube

As with happiness, there are songs that make me sad because I associate them with something -- I have bit my lip and fought back tears at hearing Backstreet Boys songs on the radio, and no it's not because I am that aesthetically committed to dislike of boy bands that it makes me cry), but there is a song that makes me sad even though my associations with it are quite good: I first heard it soon after I met Andrew.

And that's a bloody good thing, because if I'd heard it when I was still single, it might have driven me round the bend.

"Jean Laurendeau and the Ondes Martenot" (Watch on YouTube)

A little while ago
My mother told me
Jesus loved the world
And if that's true then
Why hasn't he helped
me to find a girl
And find my world

This is the dream, of the title and the chorus: to fall in love.

The song exists in some later, more polished form, and that one hardly leaves me full of the joys of spring, but it doesn't make me sad like this one does. His breaking voice and the simple, plodding piano chords (which always sound wobbly to me, on this recording) convey perfectly what he says in the chorus: "it haunts me so."

It haunts me too. such a small, simple thing that manages to go from "time for supper now" (and the word supper, which my family use but no one else in my life really, so it is very evocative of all the complicated heartwrenchingness of childhood for me) to stars and God.

Andrew's said of Brian Wilson that a good artist makes you think "she's expressing what she feels" and a great one makes you think "she's expressing what I feel"; he thinks Brian Wilson is a great artist, and on the strength of this song alone I would agree, that's what it does for me, it expresses something I feel (not that I am that desperate to fall in love, but there certainly was a time that I still well remember, when I yearned for that kind of connection to the universe because I felt it was so completely lacking from my life) that I didn't even have words for, and this is why it gets to me so much.

It's not so bad now actually. But I first realized this song's power over me in the middle of one night, a seeming long time ago now, when I was lying next to a peacefully sleeping Andrew, but I wasn't getting any sleep and it didn't help that this song was going through my head, unbidden, out of nowhere. Let me tell you: it is especially ill-suited to the dark hours of the soul, the low blood-sugar times, when the world is quiet and you feel it's just you and the Universe. And the longing, the aching in this song, seemed to fill my mind and even my body, and I lay there with silent tears streaming from my eyes, not wanting to disturb Andrew, as after all there wasn't a thing wrong with me, I remember distinctly feeling utterly fine, it was just this song...

I'm better now. I listened to it a couple of times while I was writing this (pleased if shocked to find the demo version on youtube) and it didn't make me that sad. In case you were worried.

Helplessness Blues

The world was full of bad omens this morning.

I don't believe in omens, but loads of people don't believe in evolution and it's still there anyway, so that's how much the world cares about your beliefs.

There was water all over the kitchen floor. Lots of it. The washing machine continues to be a bane of my existence.

The GP's was crowded; charitably I could say there was a miscommunication that left the receptionist telling me to go in to the doctor's room just as the door of said room was closing behind some slimy fucker who determined that if it was niine o'clock it was his turn, never mind the girl who'd been waiting fifteen minutes and spent it regretting leaving the house without so much as a cup of tea.

I ended up being there nearly an hour, only to be told the thyroid test that might have explained my constant cataclysmic tiredness lately came back perfectly fine; there is nothing in my blood to indicate I am anything but healthy.

Which is good.

I did the anxiety/depression metrics, circle the number for how often you feel bad and got practically nothing on anxiety and middling on depression. Both scores much lower than the last time I'd been tested.

Which is good too.

The doctor seemed at a bit of a loss though. He knows the meds don't do anything. He asked about counselling, but I'd forgotten about the referral, it having been so long since I've heard from them (and that was just to ask if I was okay with being seen by trainees).

I have again had a medical assessment for a benefit I should've been on for weeks (months, years in my case) before the assessment, but I've yet to see a penny of benefits or a decision from either of those assessments.

Okay, so I'm not ill then, I thought defiantly as I left the doctor. Can't be. Fine.

I know I have friends who think that people like me are abusing the system for the people who "legitimately" need it. Just like I know I have friends who think some people are fat that I don't think are.

But maybe they're right about me.

I want to go back to school. University. I think that will always be my sword of Damocles. I want to devote my time to something I can feel good about. But I'm so wary of failure, and of learned helplessness. I'm scared that I'm scared to go back to work or school or life, to be well again. I don't think I am, but I worry I might be.

Ten minutes after I stopped telling myself I was ill, I was crying. Nothing had happened, nothing had changed. I was talking to someone I love, who loves me, and the tears just started falling.

And I'm not physically ill and I'm not mentally ill. There's no measureable sympatoms and no cure, and it's those things that define illness. I don't feel ill today -- I did last night, last week, last month, but not today. "Neither sad, nor sick... nor merry, nor well." Sing it, sister.