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Better Than This

25 · Oct · 2002

A friend of mine told me the other night that he has been alone for the last four months. No girlfriend, no love interest, nada. And he said this is the happiest he’s ever been. I knew where he was coming from. I have spent long periods of time alone too, although it didn’t come without a price. Being alone, truly alone, forces a person to get to know themselves. And for most people, finding out who they really are is not as rewarding in the beginning as we wish it to be.

It’s easy to joke with our friends. “I am an unemployed writer!” I laugh. But wait. Sitting alone in my kitchen and saying this to only me feels quite different. And that was an easy confession about my identity compared to the other ones. I remember just over year ago, looking at my hands as they lay on a pillow in my room and saying out loud “These are the hands of a thirty year old woman who no one is in love with.” Ouch.

Luckily, if you can get past all your ugliness, you will actually start to uncover some good truth about who you are as well. Whatever I had done wrong, made me no worse than the next guy in Gods’ opinion. And anybody else who wanted to point a finger at me was probably just somebody who didn’t know themselves very well. We are all on equal ground whether we choose to accept it or not.

These are two things this week that I wish I and my friends could remember more often:

You have to face who you really are in order to make yourself into who you want to be.

No man’s past can dictate his future.


better than this

i have long been lying
though it was not by choice
long i have engaged your lives
and hoped to hear a voice
but we’re building community on music and drink
and if no one gets lucky, we never have to think

(chorus)
cause luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and we’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this

you can’t know by my eyes
and I’d rather not explain
but two years ago I died
and then woke up again
and if I had the sympathy of a label or a bass
the simple love i learned you wouldn’t dare waste

but luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and we’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this

if you want to cry your wedding ring to sleep
if you only want a body and a piercing clear drink
if you want a lover who cannot love you back
you’ll lay with your pity for a long winter’s nap

if I said it louder
and pretended not to care
would you speak some truth?
or simply stop right there
it’s such a flood here when it’s s not bone dry
blessed be the man unafraid to ask why

luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and you’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this

Penny René

++++++++++++++++++++++++


Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions
. ~albert camus

Posted by Penny Rene at October 25, 2002 05:28 PM