MY FIRST BREATH

***I struggle with depression. There, it's out there. Every once in a while, it comes back with new wartime strategies and I have to regroup and fight the battle all over again. But the one tactic that always remains the same is self-deprecation--the self-exploration that leads to the regret that I wasn't better. I see my mistakes in a new light, and I have to work my way through them and rearrange the meaning so that I can make peace with it and move on. This is one of those frustration-tinged-with-hope songs I wrote while I worked through a particularly tough battle, and even though I wrote it half a decade ago it still pops up in my mind from time to time. I guess you could say it's my own personal fight song.***

It started with just one stone, in a field of flowers
In sleepy summer days spent away, too good to be true, it seemed.
But then the rains came, the winds came, now see how she cowers
In the corner of this very bad dream.

Every lowered expectation, every blow of realism,
Every self-imposed inhibition, every self-doubt and self-denial
Was a stone upon a stone, meant for protection, became blinding—
A wall so high, so deep, now she can’t see anything at all.

(chorus)
She’s locked herself away in a tower stained with tears,
But she was made for better things than the prison of her fear.
She was made for smiling and sweet dreams and singing to the starlight.
She was made to live—she was made to breathe.

Broken hearts and dreams suffocate her, she’s fading fast,
Trapped inside the shadows that this fortress casts.
Tear it down before you lose her forever—
It’s a risk, but one worth trying for—she is dying! (For)

(chorus)

Who she wants to be, who she is, who she was before—
Who is that girl? I don’t recognize her anymore.
Fight for her, free her, find yourself again,
Knock down that wall and step out into the sun…

I have locked myself away in a tower stained with tears,
But I was made for bigger things than the prison of my own fear.
I was made for laughing, loving, dancing in the sunlight.
I am going to live—I am going to breathe
My first breath.