My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my…
Last fall, when planning out 20th anniversary posts for this website, I asked all of my friends’ children to send me a few songs that embodied me and ALANILAGAN.com in their minds. Each response was fascinating because it revealed a few things about what they each thought of me, and unintentionally, perhaps, a few things they thought about themselves. I’m slowly working my way through them, and one of the first ones that spoke to me illustrated the intuition and unexpected clairvoyance of Suzie’s daughter Oona.
Always sharp on the ways of humans, thanks to keen and practiced observation, Oona has had a prescient brilliance that set her quietly apart from the rest. I remember what it’s like to be a little different that way – a little quieter and more self-contained – and it has a tendency to work against you in the very ways you most want to reach out and connect. That ended up saving me some serious heartbreak, however, and I’m sure Oona is turning it to her own advantage. As for this song, at first I wondered why she chose it, and then I decided to write what it meant to me before I asked. Here is ‘Death By A Thousand Cuts’ by Taylor Swift, and as I listened to it an understanding of stories I’d forgotten I’d written began to unfold…
Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cutsFlashbacks waking me upI get drunk, but it’s not enough‘Cause the morning comes and you’re not my babyI look through the windows of this loveEven though we boarded them upChandelier’s still flickering here‘Cause I can’t pretend it’s ok when it’s notIt’s death by a thousand cuts
Upon first reading, the lyrics seem to indicate some sort of treatise on the demise of a romantic relationship, which is usually what Taylor does best. The first few listens I got some resonance from that, but then another relationship presented itself in my mind – my relationship with drinking – and suddenly this song became one of those flashpoints when everything comes brilliantly alive in frightening fashion. “I get drunk but it’s not enough…”
It’s been three and a half years since I last had a drink, and it’s not even something I think about all that often. So completely has my lifestyle changed in that time, along with the world, that it feels like a thousand years ago, but sometimes it’s good to remember, and to see how drinking might have become my death by a thousand cuts.
I dress to kill my timeI take the long way homeI ask the traffic lights if it’ll be all rightThey say, “I don’t know”And what once was ours is no one’s nowI see you everywhereThe only thing we shareIs this small town
You said it was a great loveOne for the agesBut if the story’s overWhy am I still writing pages?
When you use alcohol as a method of dealing with your demons, it takes on aspects of a very toxic relationship – the kind of relationships that slowly kills you rather than ending it in one fell swoop. It doesn’t start out that way, and for a while – a couple of decades in fact – it seduced and made it seem like that was the best way to solve any and all problems. It was my way of dealing with social anxiety, and unfair situations, and anger and loss and happiness and joy and celebration… well, you get the idea. It feeds on itself, and I could feel myself heading down a darker path that was alienating loved ones as much as I was alienating myself. My sense of self grew hazier with every martini, my bearings and judgment grew shakier with every glass of wine, and when you start to lose those things, you sometimes hold onto yourself by drinking more.
‘Cause saying goodbye is death by a thousand cutsFlashbacks waking me upI get drunk, but it’s not enough‘Cause the morning comes and you’re not my babyI look through the windows of this loveEven though we boarded them upChandelier still flickering here‘Cause I can’t pretend it’s okay when it’s notIt’s death by a thousand cuts
On those mornings after I’d had too much, that was when it really hurt. It wasn’t the physical aspect of a hangover that was so debilitating and destructive – it was the emotional and mental state I’d be in, the incredibly depressing down that came from drowning myself in a depressant and thinking that would solve anything. The flashbacks woke me up… I looked through the windows of the boarded-up love I shared with liquor… and I knew that liquor would never be my salvation, it would only be my death, no matter how insidiously long it took. Deadened by a thousand cuts…
In that gray haze, I would look around me at the world and wonder why I couldn’t just be like everyone else, why I never felt like I fit in, why everything felt so much harder and more difficult, why I needed a drink to make it all bearable. Slowly, I began to make sense of things, and on the day that it finally and fully dawned on me that my drinking was self-medication for social anxiety and how ill-at-ease I felt with myself and my place in the world, I decided to work on that, and the need – the want – the desire – for all that annihilation instantly dissipated.
The bridge of this song hits harder when I think of all that I put myself through. A bridge is a powerful symbol – it can connect disparate places and parts, piecing things together that might not normally be joined. The rivers and ravines of our lives aren’t always without purpose, but when we create our own divisions and cuts and separations, sometimes we need a bridge. To heal, to join, to make us whole again.
My heart, my hips, my body, my loveTrying to find a part of me that you didn’t touchGave up on me like I was a bad drugNow I’m searching for signs in a haunted clubOur songs, our films, united we standOur country, guess it was a lawless landQuiet my fears with the touch of your handPaper cut stings from our paper thin plans
Knowing that and stopping my drinking was relatively easy once I fully understood what was at work – the hard part was untangling all the things that my drinking had infiltrated and tied in knots. How to dismantle something that had formed such a pillar of my existence? Wasn’t the cocktail an integral part of what made me so fun? Wasn’t it the only thing that made me fun? A part of me that alcohol didn’t touch? A part of me that drinking didn’t take up? I was so mad at myself for not seeing it sooner, for letting it almost take over, I scream out the rest of the bridge in a rage.
My time, my wine, my spirit, my trustTrying to find a part of me you didn’t take upGave you so much but it wasn’t enoughBut I’ll be all right, it’s just a thousand cuts
That’s the trick of drinking. It would never be enough, not for the reasons I thought I needed it. Once I saw that, and started to address the underlying reasons for it, I could let that relationship go. The clean-up and shift took some time, as it was a drastic life-change, but it felt so good that, as frightening as it was to deal with the real reasons for it, I knew it was worth it. Finding the way back to yourself after twenty-plus years of running away from that person isn’t easy. I’d hurt myself, and others, in all that time, and facing the man I’d become from a place of purity – from the place I was in before I started drinking – was uncomfortable and humbling – and precisely what I needed. It was good to see him again, to feel him still there, no matter how badly I hurt him just trying to do the best I knew to survive, to get us both through. We both did our best, and somehow we both came together, fully integrated all these years later, and ready to start again.
