Do you remember "No Need to Argue" an epic musical masterpiece by The Cranberries? I do. Boy do I. It was 1994, I was 13 and I vividly remember listening to "Zombie" over and over and over again. At 13 you are beginning to explore the concept of betrayal, lust, love, honor and trust. This was the year I also locked myself in the upstairs bathroom and refused to come out... with my dad eventually taking the door off the hinges. Reality Bites would be released in 1994, Empire Records the year later. I wanted to shave my head. I wore my great-grandfather 's pants until their mysterious disappearance in 1995. Eventually I would help shave my best friend's head, which amazingly took me and two boys to complete. It actually sounds like a bad joke: "How many teenagers does it take to shave a head? Three. One to mistakenly buzz off a 2 X 2 inch square and two others to convince everyone that full buzzcut was exactly what they were going for in the first place". I wore an impressive amount of overalls. I remember my first real heart break. I played "I Can't Be With You" on repeat and cried my little heart out laying on my... wait for it... waterbed (it was the '90s). I think back to these years and this album and I have realized those tortuous teenage years have paved the way for this time of my very adult life. I can't lock myself in a a bathroom for hours... I can hardly pee in the bathroom without someone trying to get in. But I can sit here and listen to this album and realize that I have felt all these feelings before. I have lived through it. Of course divorce and cancer is on a much larger scale then Boyfriend #2 of my whole life dumping me in a note found in my locker... but at the time... it was all consuming. Nothing feels as real and true and damning like that first real teenage heartbreak. To return to where you come from is a very beautiful thing, to look back at the raw teenage emotion and go, well, I am thirty-three now, but I still love that much. I love these people so much that I am completely consumed with the fear of losing them. And though I know one is worth letting go of and one is worth fighting tooth and nail for, it's all relative. This weekend is the "official move out" weekend. On Friday I drank too much and cried and told complete strangers how much I hurt. It was absolutely terrible. But I know it was bound to happen. Because deep down I am still the artsy girl who wears her great grandpa's pants and can be a complete emotional wreck. I am still the girl who starts to cry when she hears a song on the radio. The question is, how do I honor the 13 year old who walked these earth shattered steps before me, but translate and teacher to her to be harder, tougher, stronger. I know I need to become stronger. I need to harden myself to certain things I can not change. Because there are an impressive amount of things that I can not change. And I know, with all the new knowledge I have sitting here now, that if I am completely honest with myself that I don't want to change anything when it comes to my situation. Talking to a very good friend today I asked her to consider if nothing in her current situation was to change in 5 years, could she live in the environment and be happy? I have asked myself that recently. Could I live for the next five years in my current emotional and physical environment and be fulfilled? I told her that I don't want to enter the next decade of my life being this unhappy. Looking at what has happened with my mom, I have realized that we do not even know what tomorrow will bring. So maybe even if you had to live tomorrow still in a crappy emotional and physical environment, would you stay? I am committed to hard work, but you can only work on changing things for the better if everyone living in the environment is willing to pick up their shovels and do it. I can only work alone on myself. I am accepting that I am angry, that I am sad. I am accepting that listening to The Best of The Cranberries (with heavy emphasis on "Linger") on repeat does not make me weird. I am accepting that everything will get better. I am accepting that I survived being 13 and I am accepting that I will survive this.
"I have decided to leave you forever.
I have decided to start things from here.
Thunder and lightning won't change,
What I'm feeling and the daffodils look lovely today,
And the daffodils look lovely today,Look lovely today."
I have decided to start things from here.
Thunder and lightning won't change,
What I'm feeling and the daffodils look lovely today,
And the daffodils look lovely today,Look lovely today."
- Daffodil Lament , The Cranberries
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