Help me polarize, help me polarize,
Help me down,
Those stairs is where I’ll be hiding all my problems.
Help me polarize, help me polarize,
Help me out.
My friends and I, we’ve got a lot of problems.
You know where I’m coming,
From though I am running,
To you, all I feel is deny, deny, denial.
I’ve had three pretty weighty epiphanies in the past week. The trouble with big thoughts such as epiphanies is that you can’t get them off your mind; they keep gnawing at you, ringing more and more true. Before long, you might even accept them as fact.
And facts are inescapable.
This sounds dark, but it doesn’t have to be taken as such. True, I could make this post really long, going into the shadowy depths of each epiphany and what they may or may not mean, but that’d be unhealthy for all of us. I’ll just focus on the main one, to spare us all: Music is the only thing you – or perhaps just I – can depend on.
Tonight I’ve fallen victim
In my head to a could’ve been.
Thinking too much and too often
About you,
Again.
If I knocked, would you let me in?
I’m a fool,
Again.
If I knocked, would you let me in?
Everybody needs a place to call their home,
Everybody needs someone to call their own.
Even when you’re lonely, know you’re not alone,
You’re one of us, one of us, one of us, one of us.
…
I don’t got much, but I got heart and soul,
I found myself through all the highs and lows.
Oh, will you drown in the pain, or go dance in the rain?
What are you living for, living for, living?
…
Bring the sunshine in, the happy days
The hardship too, we’ll find a way.
So raise your flag one last time.
Before the day is through, I promise you that
We will laugh about it all and we’ll celebrate
The things we’ve done, the years to come,
Cause that’s what friends, that’s what friends are for.
I can’t stand people who have nothing to say for themselves. You know – those people who are just so vanilla, so mild, so unwilling to contradict you, and so annoyingly pleasant all of the time. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these people. They’re nice. But it’s impossible for me to have a real conversation with them; it’s always small talk about the weather and finals coming up.
I suppose I’m opinionated enough myself (considering I unashamedly rant on the internet like this somewhat regularly). However, I intentionally try to surround myself with people who are even more opinionated – people who have something to say about the most random things, and passionately. Whether I agree with their opinions or not is no concern. The fact that they are unapologetically themselves, that their personality is constantly reflected by their words, and that they are unafraid to express themselves is so refreshing. But above all, they’re just really fun to rile up. I swear, nothing is more fun for me than spurring a heated spiel in someone. Hey, I’ve gotta break the monotony somehow.
I’ve struggled for some time now over my perception of routine. Every time I start getting stuck into a fixed schedule, I find myself growing resentful of it and wishing I were doing something more flexible. Then I’ll break the routine even for a short period and find myself craving consistency once more. It happened just in the past week.
After two months of being back at school, I found myself itching. Monday and Tuesday meant shifts at the climbing gym; Wednesday, a drum lesson; Thursday, layout for the school paper all afternoon and evening; Friday, a newspaper section meeting and going to the downtown climbing gym. Even weekends, supposedly free, were structured – one day for work, the other for outdoor activity. And then of course irritating meetings, errands, and other obligations would overlay that basic routine. I became exhausted, running myself into the ground as I walked the same paths week after week.
