Let me down
When I was in 6th grade, my friend Doug introduced me to the band No Use For A Name (NUFAN). I quickly absorbed whatever I could find of theirs, and always deeply appreciated the blend of punk beats, emotional melodies and the smooth croonings of Tony Sly (RIP).
Fast forward 28 years later, and here I am - drinking my morning coffee and listening to Let Me Down. The song hit me different today and just wanted to get into it a bit.
The song is about the singer’s friend (former lover?) that is described thusly:
She's never alone
Because she's scared of what she might say to herself
Always drinking in the backroom of the bar
Where everyone turns in a half-hearted grin
The person that’s being described is someone that struggles to be alone due to her inability to let go of the trauma. And though the story is told from the singer’s perspective, as the listener it’s possible to perceive the situation from the objective third party POV, and to empathize with both people.
The singer is frustrated and feels let down by the friend who he cares for deeply as they continue to self-sabotage. If only they could be present, they could see that the trauma from the past are not threats in the current moment. The feeling of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” is something that is invented, at one point as a survival mechanism, but one that’s been burned into this person’s psyche.
This is what trauma does to people - it prevents them from being present, from realizing the truth of the matter. Their perspective on life skewed to see things as happening to them, the need to always have the best reaction for any given situation memorized and rehearsed, comparing their actions against the other “what ifs”. Life then becomes a battle for survival instead of a game of exploration. And whether it is described as one or the other always and only depends on the perspective of the person you ask.
It’s my perspective though, that we all have the ability to determine, to decide on how it is that you are perceiving life. The challenge, however, is the fact that if someone has the POV that life is a battle for survival, there is nothing technically wrong with that. It’s true that if we don’t eat, we’ll die. That if we don’t work, then we’ll starve to death.
But what’s also true is that despite the world’s best attempts, we have survived up to this point. If you are alive to read this, you have all of history behind you as something you have overcome to be able to witness the current moment. The past, no matter how painful, is something that you have defeated (by the skin of your teeth in many cases!) and is something that cannot touch you.
Be brave in the face of whatever may be standing in your way. Find your way by learning to quiet your mind and learn to tune into what you truly want. Spend time exploring and being present as often as you can remind yourself so you can know how you truly feel about what it is you are perceiving. We live life in these loops we call days — you have the ability to make small adjustments day by day, loop by loop, to bring closer and tighter to what you want, and to make decisions and take actions to remove what we don’t want. But it starts with knowing yourself and what you want.
You can do it.
Ultimately the song is about the feeling of disappointment felt by the singer. But the real takeaway for me was the opportunity to dig into what trauma in our lives can do to us, and how we can overcome it to start living the life we truly want.
