Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.26

Me Versus Me
Stacy Barthe

I've been feeling disconnected /from/
The smooth-smelling touch /of/
Another human being /against/
My wounded heart /for/
Too long.

Which futures can you see /into/
Because all I want is to run /toward/
The one where I am /inside/
Your house /between/
safe walls.

Lyrics
It's difficult to read these lyrics and talk about my past, but for once it's not because the past is sad. It's because my present feels more alive in this song than my past.

I suppose this problem of getting in the way of yourself, of not allowing the true you to be happy because the mind you has told lies, painted so convincingly they adopt the pose and identity of reality, this problem is not new to this song or me, but I can attempt to outline my first meeting with it. Because, really, hasn't everyone lived this story once?
In high school, I first realized what everyone else had been selling as normal humanity for all those years. I found living in me new wants that expressed themselves (as I know it now) so innocently and so passionately that I felt they must be wrong. (And how is that right? I suppose I equated the desire for things with the indulgence in them, and indulgence itself with overindulgence. In the same way that the thought of eggs or bagels or pancakes push themselves on your growling mind as you rub the sleep from your eyes in the morning, and you chide yourself for not wanting an apple and toast [even though the wanting of pancakes is not the same as pushing five into your mouth], I felt the incessant nag that something really truly must be wrong about wanting something you don't quite know how to deserve, even.) I remember the physical shock of her knee touching mine beneath the table in math class. Honestly, they just brushed, but I jerked away in shock at being made to feel something so strongly, and I sat, motionless and staring at my paper for what would have been an uncomfortably long time if she had actually looked at me, which she didn't, because the thought didn't occur to her to do so. I wasn't in her head, but she was in mine. I liked the first person I ever liked because she was frank and happy, and it wasn't until after I asked her out and she told me no that I found out how much she had hidden of her sorrow. I didn't get to know her, and I certainly didn't make any moves to do so because I held a deep-set fact so close to my bones that they were imprinted with it: I wasn't desirable. Why would she want anything as awkward as this? My future was written on my skeleton from the moment I woke up to sexual desire: I was unwantable because I didn't know I could be.
You can run as fast as you can, but you can't outrun yourself.

Stephen
You make me want to listen to the whole album. We were talking about this just today. Why don't people listen to albums anymore? I guess it's the fractured way in which music is now available. In order to get to track three, you don't need to put the needle in the middle of track two's third verse on accident.
I think, if this song came from body image issues and a fear of never being touched, that it does a better job of communicating humanity than Meghan Trainor's Bass. That's okay. I also think that I understand the message from a personal perspective. I shouldn't, but I don't feel attractive. Even at my most confident, I cannot remove that doubt.