Sufjan Stevens ‘Death With Dignity’

There is only one album I will listen to on days like today, and that is Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Carrie And Lowell’. It’s so clichéd (and downright cringe) to say that an album got you through a difficult time, but there is no other way of expressing it – this song allowed me to embrace my emotions and truly grieve at a time when even getting out of bed was a monumental task. I’m not a big sharer and I tend to push negative thoughts away, so sometimes it takes a prompt of some kind to get me to open up or indeed even allow myself to actually experience how I am feeling. Now that time/medication/responsibilities have somewhat numbed those difficult feelings, simple things like crying don’t come as easily to me – sometimes it takes a completely unrelated experience to bring those emotions to the surface; an advert, a slightly harsh word, a computer crashing. I know they are still there because I tend to express these things somatically. When I am feeling low people around me will notice how slow I become, how difficult I find it to hold conversations. More alarming is my tendency to experience sadness through my mouth of all places – over the years I have ground my teeth down to a fine paste and chewed my cheeks to the point of leaving long train track scars on the inside of my mouth. Right now I’m dealing with a particularly hardcore spread of ulcers under my tongue and I am quite honestly dreading the next Bonjela (other brands are available) application – the last one caused me to literally shriek in pain, much to the alarm of my cat/neighbours. Tomorrow is a new day, and I am quite sure I will feel much better after a good sleep and some Blue Planet 2. You spend the year dreading difficult anniversaries, and when the day comes it’s never as bad as you think it is going to be – if anything the anticipation is worse than the day itself. As this day draws to an end I am comforted by the fact that tomorrow the sun will rise again, I will get on the train and head into work. It might even be a good day. Who knows? That in itself is a reason to keep on trucking.