Nothing under your bed

You can wait for inspiration if you need to strike it rich
But you’ll hear that you don’t need it; hear me call myself a bitch
Because if you would just work harder then the chips would fall in place
And you’ll never leave the starting mark if you don’t agree to run the race

And you don’t get my pity; you don’t get to feel my fear
It’s a thousand shades of lying and you can speak, but I won’t hear
I’ll just have to wind you tighter, but be careful you don’t break
Because I’d still expect perfection; all your wounds are clearly fake

And I screamed when I first heard this, and I called it so untrue
But it’s the same old rope I hung from and now I’ve turned it back on you
Took so long to get untangled but we’re still not really free
Because they can’t hurt you anymore; now your enemy is me

I can’t help but withhold pity, repeating things I claimed to hate
And I’ve been told I’m safe now, but I think safe came far too late
And even this I can’t regret; it’s not something I get to taste
Because I’m not sure I understand kindness- not after what I faced

But I still can’t say I’m damaged, and I can’t just call it wrong
What happened there was nothing; you’ll find worse in any song
But maybe this I’ve also skewed, maybe I just don’t comprehend
I might not see it truly because I doubted it would end

Because when you’ve lived with something, I doubt you’ll see another life
Oh, sure, you might have dreams of one, but they’re balanced on a knife
You don’t fully understand that one day they could possibly be true
So it’s a kind of shock, you see, but I guess that’s what dreams do

And you shouldn’t find it frightening when there’s nothing left to fear
But it’s that very thing- the ABSENCE- and you’re told you’re in the clear
But this has never stopped before; you didn’t think that it could end
And so you check behind you; see an enemy in a friend.