Updated from Summer 2018
"Sometimes people say a song made them cry when they mean a song let them cry."
I saw that quote on Twitter and couldn't get it out of my head all day.
I immediately thought of the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence.
I first heard My Immortal in 2004. I looked it up because it was on a list of songs my second child, CJ, then aged 10, had asked her younger sister, SF, to download for her when she came to my house.
CJ, formerly sharing a close and loving relationship with me since her birth, was deeply entrenched in a campaign of hatred against me, fed by her father (and his supporters) after I escaped from him. For over two years, she refused to visit me or even speak to me without hateful words. I soon found out there is a name for what was happening there: "Parental Alienation Syndrome". Though PAS is not an actual health condition, it is nonetheless a broken state of being that is not healthy for a child's development.
It is not healthy for the alienated parent, either.
Something inside of me got broken.
That was a long time ago, and the situation is better now. My daughter grew older and wiser, and she realized that the things being said about me were untrue. She learned to make her own choices, and has returned to me.
But for years, every time I heard "My Immortal", I'd take a deep breath and subconsciously ask myself, "So, are you going to make it through the song without crying this time?"
I'd nod my head and inwardly say, "Yes, I can do this."
I'd get through the nocturne piano intro played in the key of melancholy minor.
"I'm so tired of being here..." the female voice would sing.
"Suppressed by all my childish fears..."
And I'd daze out a bit, until it built into:
"These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase..."
That was as far as I could get before the fight began to be lost.
"When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears
I saw that quote on Twitter and couldn't get it out of my head all day.
I immediately thought of the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence.
I first heard My Immortal in 2004. I looked it up because it was on a list of songs my second child, CJ, then aged 10, had asked her younger sister, SF, to download for her when she came to my house.
CJ, formerly sharing a close and loving relationship with me since her birth, was deeply entrenched in a campaign of hatred against me, fed by her father (and his supporters) after I escaped from him. For over two years, she refused to visit me or even speak to me without hateful words. I soon found out there is a name for what was happening there: "Parental Alienation Syndrome". Though PAS is not an actual health condition, it is nonetheless a broken state of being that is not healthy for a child's development.
It is not healthy for the alienated parent, either.
Something inside of me got broken.
That was a long time ago, and the situation is better now. My daughter grew older and wiser, and she realized that the things being said about me were untrue. She learned to make her own choices, and has returned to me.
But for years, every time I heard "My Immortal", I'd take a deep breath and subconsciously ask myself, "So, are you going to make it through the song without crying this time?"
I'd nod my head and inwardly say, "Yes, I can do this."
I'd get through the nocturne piano intro played in the key of melancholy minor.
"I'm so tired of being here..." the female voice would sing.
"Suppressed by all my childish fears..."
And I'd daze out a bit, until it built into:
There's just too much that time cannot erase..."
When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me."
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me."
I'd think of so many times that I held my crying little girl, wiping tears from her face... and then I'd be wiping my own.
A sign of humanity.
Somewhere along the line, enough tears bled from my wounds to allow some kind of scar to form. Today I purposely tested it. In a somewhat noisy house, as the song filled my ears, I didn't cry, but I still felt the tracks of those tears, like tire ruts wanting to pull me in.
However, as I listened again later, while writing this blog post, when all was quiet and I was alone, tears filled my eyes.
Still human.
I had to turn the song off because I don't want to cry right now.
Actually, I never want to, even though I understand some of the science and spirit behind its necessity.
Other devastations have happened over the years. My Immortal has been replaced by different songs that want to all but drown me. The songs start to play and I quickly switch them off, sometimes accompanied by a whispered "No. It hurts too much."
But maybe I need to listen and weep.
I've written a lot about tears in posts on another blog I have over at Wordpress. Here is a link for some: Posts that deal with tears .
And here is something (this link) written by a gentleman whose books helped me greatly in recovering from some traumas, Lundy Bancroft, on the topic of tears. You'll see that I commented at the end of the article, me being "Steenybopper".
In the back of my mind is the reminder that God keeps our tears in a bottle (Psalms 56:8). What exactly is meant by that, I only know darkly as through a glass, but I plan to know fully someday.
And then there's this: "...weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5)
And the normality of tears is pointed out in Ecclesiastes 3:4: "...A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..."
And my favorite is from Revelation 21:4, from whence I take hope in knowing that someday God Himself will wipe away my tears. Peace, precious peace, at last.
There IS hope, but meanwhile there is the shedding of tears. <3
Read more at my entire blog:
Related posts:
They Who Feel Too Much
