I bet you're hard to get over

yes, it's true that I believe
I'm weaker than I used to be
I wear my heart out on my sleeve
and I forget the rest of me

It's hard living life on the surface of the skin, so it's really no surprise I jump back into old patterns given half the chance. The struggle is to remain open, remain flexible, remain adaptive. Remain vulnerable. It's something of a delicate mental state.



yes, there's times I've been afraid
and there's no harm in that I pray

What's the end goal? Life experience that leads to learning, not hiding. Emotional states that are more fully developed, not reactionary. I don't always succeed; after all, I'm trying this great experiment as a very flawed being. There are bound to be failures in thought, in reaching out, in perceptions, along the way.



'cause I'm more frightened everyday
someone will take the hope I have away

but you gotta give up
to get off sometimes...
you gotta give up
to get get off sometimes, I know

All right, fine, my choices occasionally hurt me, deeply, but what's the alternative? Pulling back. Building up the fortress walls. Never reaching out. That way lies ossification, stagnation, the end of personal growth. Growth is never easy. Understanding is a constant struggle. There will be pain.



all the times I've given in
(one by one by)
you fit me like a second skin
(one by one by)
and one by one I will begin
to wear you on the days I'm feeling thin

That is the thing I'm struggling against hardest. To put it in a certain way, my sword and shield should be one person, specifically, not another. Or, slightly rephrased--I can't use the fellow I'm struggling to sort out my feelings about in the first place, as refuge to buffer those feelings. That's not only recursive, but dangerous.



but you gotta give up
to get off sometimes--

Of course, that occasionally leaves me stranded between the fellow who cautiously yearns, and the fellow that says everything will work out, and for once, I'm not sure the latter's position is emotionally honest. There is still trust. Don't get me wrong. But there's that undercurrent of no safe harbor, and...is that part of it? No safety, I have to learn how to walk the tightrope without the net?

Is that ever viable?

(I forgot to list the sims I hit for the last two entries, but here it was the Escapades sim, Azshra the Convergence, Wildwood Gardens, Fox Grove, and Salt Water. Lyrics from Matchbox Twenty's song "Stop".)