I suppose people see me as a guy who is strong For the most part they're right but they're slightly wrong They think i can handle whatever is thrown But everyone thinks this, and i become overblown There comes a time when i can't take anymore The last straw breaks and it locks the door I'm a fairly hard person to disappoint But i do have - my breaking point And it hurts - it scars It breaks all at once A built-up violent outburst And my defences crumble down They bury me and i don't really know If i want to fight my way back up I bubble under and need a hand to keep me from going down Why does it always come when i'm already drowned? For i'm now a lost cause and i'm beyond rescue Time's healed me before but now it'll be hard to do I don't need to hear words: strengthening or complaints I need time out of my life of restraint WIll things ever improve or is this my doomed fate And if they will, when shall be this date? And my breaking point Has reached its extreme It's got me in a headlock Motionless on the floor Pinning me down and i don't really know If i want to fight my way back up Do i really want to fight my way back up?

Commentary While it may not come as much as a surprise to anyone who's read some of my darker material here, it often comes as a surprise to a lot of people who know me that i have long battled and suffered from bouts of severe depression. This was written about some of those moments even though around the time i wrote this, someone had told me i was one of the strongest people they knew. Even though when i'm at my worst, i don't want to get out of bed or go outside or face anyone else, once i am out there interacting with others, be it at work, with friends, in a rehearsal space, etc. i do a pretty good job of keeping up a brave face and "leaving my problems at home" and it really does shock people when they learn just how much of a long hard battle depression has been for me and the extreme i experience. Yes, as mentioned on the home page, there was a long very deep one during the years when i could barely sing... but that was just the worst and longest continuous one...depression's been a part of my life for a long time and this particular song was actually written when i was in my teens! It's always interesting to me to remember that since i generally look at my late teens/early 20's as overall being the happiest time of my life...but in the backdrop there were still the periodic bouts of depression regardless. Of course, being an earlier work, there are some individual parts of the song that i kind of cringe at today, but overall it's still one of my earlier pieces t like to hold onto precisely because it does an excellent job of capturing something that i still experience to this day. When i look at works like this and realize how long and how often and how deep i've had to contend with severe depression as a large part of my life, it makes me realize how strong i must be in spite of everything...the fact that i'm still actually alive today and trying to get through life is a VERY strong testiment to my strengths. I don't even want to think about what percentage of my time on this earth has been spent thinking about wanting to die but here i am a decade and a half after this was written still hanging on even though i've since experienced horrors in my life that i wouldn't have been able to imagine back in the day this was written that i'd end up going through. I often think if i had the ability to travel through time and consult with a younger version of myself at a time when i was contemplating suicide, i probably would end up telling Younger Me "You really would be doing yourself a favor if you did it. While there would be many moments of joy in the future, they're drastically outweighed by the bad. Right now is as good as it will ever get so you may very well want to quit while you're ahead." But even still, i'm still here today (whether out of bravery, foolishness or both), so maybe i really AM "the strongest person" my friends know.

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