and you smoked with the ghost in the back of my head

when I'm done with thinking, then I'm done with you.
when I'm done with crying, then I'm done with you.
when I feel so tired, then I'm done with you.
everybody feels this way sometimes, everybody feels this way--

The night's dark, and it's cold. I stand on the streetcorner and I look up and watch the moon go dark. I remember nights where this bothered me. I remember nights where I rejoiced. I remember nights where I never gave a thought to it, I was busy with other things.

It happens so often. Anyone can get distracted. Not notice. Be occupied with something else in the life. It's life, after all. So much goes on in a life.

and I do.
you can't hear it, but I do
you can't hear it, but I do

The night's dark, and it glitters. The lights dance around me, red, hot orange, bright green, glowing blue. We dance, through the colored lights, moving to the beat which compels us to move faster, moving until sweat runs from our limbs like rain and the drums command every heart to beat in pattern. We are together in this, the flame crackle is what all our ears hear, the night song moves us all as the drums beat and the dancers step to the pattern we all know.

The dance is life. The dance is survival. The dance is the choice to live again.

you're trying to convince me that what I've done's not right.
I get so frustrated, I stay up every night.
you ask me for an answer, and I'm so tired and I'm up in the air,
I'm up in the air
you know, everybody feels this way sometimes, everybody feels this way--

Light and shadow, dark and bright, we are all these things. I say I live in the shadows, out of the light, and that's largely true. That doesn't mean where I live is wrong. That doesn't mean where I live is evil. That doesn't mean I spread out from the heart of it, corrupt and indistinct, pretense of love gone viral, pretty mask hiding damnation.

No one's damned, unless they want to be. There's always a choice.

and I do.
you can't hear it, but I do.
you can't hear it, but I'm feeling this way
just because you say:

And yes, sometimes that choice hurts. Life hurts. Sometimes life deals us greater hurt than any single entity could ever do; and it takes time to come back from that pain, more time to reach the point where inhaling doesn't feel like drowning, where movement isn't agony.

But it can be done. Day by day. Hour by hour, if need be. And we, we social creatures we, we living members of the same consciousness, we cannot do it alone. We die if we try.

Though that, that is our choice, too.

I will be ignored.
I will be denied.
I could be erased.
I could be brushed aside.
I will get scared, and I will get shoved down,
but I feel like I do because you push me around--

And I go to Morgaine to remember how to breathe. I go to Rivula to remember how to smile. I go to Penzance to remember decisive action. I go to my loves to remember how to heal.

And everywhere, everywhere I go, I carry with me what I know, what I don't know, what I'm learning, what I've forgotten. And I've left the train wreck behind.

I'm starting to ignore you, I've doubted you so long.
I'm tired of over-thinking, I know you don't belong.
now I'm asking questions--no one pushes me around.
everybody feels this way sometimes, everybody feels this way--

I know it's there, it won't leave. It's too much a part of me. I know it will roll down the tracks again, at some point, if for no other reason than it's the largest symbol I have in my arsenal symbol-set, all those ideas and concepts and broken dreams.

But it's not rolling now. It's not moving. I'm moving. And I'm moving forward.

You may not see it, but I am. You may not understand it, but I am. You may not approve, but I am.

And you're only left behind if you want to be. You can choose to travel and learn--with me, or learn by yourself, or learn from others on the same path. Or you can stay and nurse your hurts where the hurts started.

It's your choice. It was my choice, too.

And I chose to listen to pain for far too long. Now I listen to the world.

and I do.
you can't hear it, but I do.
you don't seem angry, but I do.
I do.

(Lyrics are from Lisa Loeb's song I Do.)