ohbloodyhell8

I hadn’t listened to Peter Gabriel’s So for a long time.  It was a pivotal album during my initial climb out of the darkness.  It was played regularly in the final months before I got treatment.  I have an incredibly vivid memory of my mother asking me to remember the song “Don’t Give Up” each day.  She asked this even before she knew exactly what was wrong, but she heard me playing the cd over and over and heard the song.  She was reaching out in whatever way she could at the time.  I was a shadow of myself by that point.

I don’t know what the song is really about.  I never looked it up and didn’t want to know.  Still don’t really want to know.  The lyrics spoke to me in the state I was in and made me feel like I wasn’t alone and not the only one dealing with something like I was.  I know now I am not the only who has dealt with this illness.  But then I was so deep in it I wasn’t thinking straight or even for myself.

Random lines that still wash over me with such powerful emotions…

I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

don’t give up
you’re not beaten yet

don’t give up
’cause somewhere there’s a place
where we belong

rest your head
you worry too much

This verse still makes me cry because for me it was the plan for “solving” the problem…
‘got to walk out of here
I can’t take anymore
going to stand on that bridge
keep my eyes down below
whatever may come
and whatever may go
that river’s flowing
that river’s flowing

But then the chorus would sing out again…

don’t give up
’cause I believe there’s a place
there’s a place where we belong

I didn’t find the place that I belonged for a long time after that time of my life passed to a new one.  Now blessedly I have three reasons that make “solving” a problem obsolete…Hubby, Older Son, and Younger Son.  They are why I needed to not give up.

Of course, I still “worry too much” as the one line says.  What can I say, that’s me.