My Immortal

My Immortal

Artist: Evanescence

Album: Fallen

Wind Up records.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? How one piece of music-just a few words really-a few words and a few chords, and an idea-can change a life. Can speak to you-speak to you from the innermost reaches of your heart, speak to you .with the voice of your own heart. It just fits doesn’t it? Like a glove. The lyrics are about you. The song is singing your life. And all you want to say is, “Yes. This is how it was. This is how it should be. This is me. My life.” Each one of us has a special song. Some of us have several special songs. Songs that touched us,moved us, made us happy, made us sad. Well this article is about one such song. This article is a tribute to a song that spoke to me, and has spoken to millions of people the world over. This article is a tribute. A note here-I do not claim to understand perfectly what the song means. And I don’t need to really. This is what the song says to me. And that’s enough. The song is “My Immortal” by Evanescence.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. Sometimes, I wonder if Shakespeare had it right. There’s so much joy in loving. There’s so much pain. This song is about the pain.

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

We’re here again aren’t we? You’re here now.-at the end of a relationship. And honestly you don’t know where to go from here. Ever felt the feeling that it would probably be better if they just went? That things would be alright if they would just pack up and leave? And then, when they leave-the pain starts. Everything reminds you of them.-that shirt, that empty glass. If you lose a person you love, the world seems to conspire to remind you of them-in every way possible.

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

Time’s a healer they say. All wounds die with time. You know what I think? I think time is like Band-aid.-only, bad band -aid. Imagine band-aid on a septic wound. It will hide the wound. Sure. It will hide the wound just until something opens it up again. The smallest prick and we’re bleeding all over again. Because the wound inside-that doesn’t ever heal.

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

He looked at the flower, and though that look was for but one instant, the beauty in his heart he froze, long after he saw it no more. Now, take that one step further. The image that he froze in his heart-that image, devoid of the reality it represented, froze his heart.

Sanity is such a fragile thing. And we are such precocious, emotional people.-so easily disturbed. To the impartial observer we would make fine fools. We give our happiness and our sanity in the hands of another. And when that person goes away, or dies, well, a part of us dies, slowly.

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

The mind will not accept what the heart knows has happened. No matter how much we tell ourselves that they’ve gone-that it’s over and that it was for the best. It doesn’t ease the pain really. It only makes us feel alone. And then we start to think-probably we were alone all along.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me
Now these lines. Well they’re the most beautiful ones in the song, at least according to me. They’re sung three times. The first two times have a soft mourning lilt to them.

To love someone so much. Ever woken up in the middle of the night from a bad dream? Remember now. The sweat, the fear, and the sudden cry with which you awoke. And then the thought-the reassuring thought that there is someone who cares. There is someone who will stand by you .Tell you it’s alright. That it’s all good. There isn’t a reason to fear. I am here by your side.

The last time these lines are sung the song reaches its climax with the guitar and the drums crashing in and adding a whole new dimension to the lyrics-anger. The last line is prolonged and completely softened though.

You still have all of me. When you died, when you went away, you took a part of me with you. And me, my shattered and fragmented self will always love you. No matter what.