when it's time for curtain call, just before the shadows...

Pulled myself from sodden sleep, forced leaden limbs to move. Would not descend to the dreaming again, but the dream would not let me go.

I come along but I don't know where you're taking me
I shouldn't go but you're wrenching dragging shaking me
turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky
the more I give to you, the more I die

I breathed through it, moving, blinking, shreds of the dream clinging to me, trying to pull me back down.

if this is how we think we make amends
we're in for a race that never ends
where is it we think we'll go?
what is it we think we know?
it'll never change until we change ourselves

Change. It all comes back to change. Things changing out of my control, things changing seemingly on their own, but did good or bad choices prompt the changes?

That's what I'm still trapped in; the deciding. The moment of turning towards or turning away. I know where I'm standing but I've been here for a very long time.

I should. I wish I could,
maybe if you were I would--
a list of standard issue regrets.
one last 80 proof,
slouching in the corner booth--
baby, it's as good as it gets.

oh, such grace
oh, such beauty
so precious, suspicious, and charming, and vicious--

Nothing I think will change things. Action will. But it's action I still can't make myself take.

you seem so devoted
your love is unconditional
you were self-promoted
I never asked you
you were my everything
my apparitional faith
where are you when I am screaming to my God
what am I coming to?

The dream is still there. It won't quite leave me, even now; I can feel its pull on my limbs, I'm just trying to gain a little distance so it doesn't drag me right back down into its tight confines, once I try to sleep again.

What is left now?

strange winds are blowing me down this way
there's no prize in sight but the pain in my feet
but I won't remember after tonight
the clock turns red and the word on the street
is that we are getting ready to leave
behind me I've forgotten to check
all of the things that somehow now I don't seem to need

You can't get better if you're trapped in a sick system.

You can't get out of a sick system by pushing the sickness deeper down.

In a sick system, stronger elements cannibalize weaker ones in order to survive. By removing direct accountability, I am allowing this to happen.

I know all this.

I fall into the water, and once more I turn to you
and the crowds were standing, staring faceless
cutting off my view to you
they start to limply flail their bodies in a twisted mime
and I'm lost inside this tangled web in which I'm lain entwined
you're gone and I'm lost inside
this tangled web in which I'm lain entwined

This has to stop. But the how keeps eluding me. How do I get back to where I was? How do I get back to where I want to, need to, be?

How long can I survive on my own?

Sink or swim. Make your stand.

I don't know yet.

Yes or no.

I can't make that decision.

Live or die.

I'll get back to you on that.

where the sun sets slowly with a golden crown
and the leaves sing lullabies 'round vacant swings
give me those wings--

Nothing is precisely how I want it. I'm rebuilding but seemingly, I'm rebuilding the same sick structure. That's what I need to stop. That's why I'm stuck.

Change. Change is becoming imperative and I am refusing it. Sooner or later, change will happen on its own. I know this but I can't walk forward.

And meanwhile, the dreams keep pulling at me, pulling me awake, confusing me, disorienting me...showing me, in every way my subconscious has, that the system in in trouble.

I know it's in trouble. I just don't know how to fix it...yet.

(Lyrics are from Nine Inch Nails, Perfect Drug; Poets of the Fall, Rewind; OKGo, A Million Ways; Emilie Autumn, Castle Down; Headlights, Put Us Back Together Right, Sarah McLachlan, Vox; and Poets of the Fall, Given and Denied.)