Stranger Songs

1 ContributorLower (A Selfish Song) LyricsAt the start, I didn’t feel low enough. Your bed was unsettling and I was always a stranger. Now I’m clawing at my arms, reminiscing to feel something. As far down as I’ve ever been and I can’t stop digging. I want to drag you down. I need you to feel low like me. Because I can’t escape, can’t stop burying. But I’ve adjusted well – I’ve come a long way from your holy place. Hiding below myself. Trying to reach hell. But now it’s cold in my bed. I’m seeking rest. I’m distant again. And it hurts to reflect past midnight in an empty, pitch-black room. The candle burned out – I can smell the smoke as I’m cringing through another painful realization, another night sorting out the truth: telling you that I loved you was just another way I disappointed you. I know that now when I think about avoiding your eyes. I just hate how we died. I didn’t say goodbye. I’m rejecting all my past standbys – no more sympathy for old lies. I’m trading “how could you” for the new: “you did what you had to do”. I lost sight. I pay the price. I’m a dying dog on his way to the shed. Staring into the sky, don’t give a fuck what’s next. I don’t care. I can’t see it

1 ContributorWake Anxious LyricsI’m getting nervous about leaving again. I’m starting over and I’m trying to find what would make this time different. How to avoid new triggers, how to not distance myself. But all I’m finding are my permanent faults, I can never outrun them, and what I’ve learned is I’m alone. This feels like learning a new language - a tongue I wish I could ignore. I’m stuck moving forward, thinking “how many more times will I have to learn?” Is this the cost of moving on? A scorched earth past, I still look back. But how much more will I burn before I engulf myself? Will you captivate me and make me realize what I’ve done? Fall in love with me again, and I’ll lose you once more because I can’t commit. I’m too invested in losing all of this. Forced to lament and regret everything again. I’m tongue tied and overtired. Disappointed again at what I can’t mend. I don’t want to move on, but I hate looking back. But I can’t stay here. It doesn’t make sense

1 ContributorStubborn LyricsIf I seemed easy to ignore, it's because I just stopped talking. I left my thoughts to tend to themselves – it didn’t feel like rotting. But this silence – this quiet – it doesn't solve my problems. It enables them – I've allowed myself to become complacent. And now I can’t seem to connect. Have I lost you? Or have I lost myself by beating myself down, bleeding weekly in strangers basements, in stranger places than I ever wanted to go? Now it's cold again. I'm disappointed and tired and low. I want the summer songs, I want to feel connected but I don't know how. I give up again. I'm done trying to change. I'll just retreat to my room and write these suicidal songs that you'll never read along to. They'll never reach you

1 ContributorParking Lot LyricsFinally, I got the courage to speak up today. It was a whisper, but it was a sound – an effort – which is more than I can say for you. I’m sick of watching this house ruin your life. There’s too many memories you can’t move from. Too many drugs. You can’t move on, but can I blame you? How could I blame you? I don’t want to. If I didn’t watch her die from innocent eyes just know that I’d be motionless too, and I’m emotionless, too. But why stay? What’s 20 years? What’s one more day? Just know I fear how this house ruined you would ruin me too. So I made a pact today. I hugged you goodbye and I told you “to get your shit together” and I left that house for good. Now I’m driving around my hometown, one hand on the wheel, the other on my phone, writing this all down because it’s the only way I can right now. Because the feeling will stick around, but the truth is I’ve got no one else to tell this to. I’m looking back at what I first wrote – “I almost stopped to write this down” – I’m a liar, I’m in a parking lot right now. Christmas Eve, wishing things were different. I’m a liar. I’m not coming home

1 ContributorContrition LyricsWho’s to say I can escape feeling this low? I don’t know. And I’ve tried to remind myself that nothing matters, but I can’t. It just felt good to hurt again, if just for a second. I’ve been so let down and distracted for months now, and each time I write, I ask myself to change. But I sit down and my problems are the same. But who’s to blame if I’m alone all the time? The burden must be mine. I know I can’t change. I’m weighed down by selfishness. But this doesn’t sound like guilt. This is false contrition. It doesn’t hurt anymore to know I won’t change. I find comfort knowing no one’s listening. No use in hurting or trying to be perfect. I know I’m facing the worst, and I deserve it

1 ContributorStranger LyricsWeighed down by the burden of memory. Cursed forever by the act of remembering that I’ll carry this pain forever because I was meant to. Because I’m disgusted by what I left you to rot to. And I can’t help but reflect on loss and love, and what I can’t correct, or accept, or neglect, I guess. You asked me once where the fuck I was going – a paraphrase – but I remember my reply because I was silent. I stood past you, fixed on the floor, I couldn’t watch you cry. Because I could never stay in this place, I’m too attached to leaving someday and looking back just to remember what it’s like to have something. Is this the cost of disappearing? I’m never satisfied with what I have left. Only holding what could never be held. Placing blame on everything but myself. So here’s a toast to losing direction, and always moving, just not very far: I damn myself for failing to love you, because damning’s all I have anymore. But I’ll accept the blame now. You know I love my mistakes: they’re the only way I feel anything. This is the cost of disappearing. This is the weight of neglect. This is the road no one knows how to travel – the beaten trail of a million missteps. These are stranger songs because I don’t know who I am – a bubble burst from the bliss of ignorance, just growing older stuck with the same questions: why can’t I move on? What have I learned?