A dark place

Where I live, solitude is rarely a feasible option. I am never alone. Someone always knows where I am. I don't have time to cry. The children need me. After a night ridden with half-sleep and panic, sweating and thrashing and night terrors, I long to stay curled up in the covers. But I can hear my angel baby whimpering in the next room. Gray light steals through the blinds beckoning me to start the day. My eyes burn. Sometimes I long for a dark place. A quiet place where I can regroup. Where I can be alone with my thoughts and sort it all out. But life keeps happening around me, pushing, pulling, yanking me forward, and I am swept up in the river and must keep going. So I do. I have no other choice.

Other times I carry my dark place with me. And it is not the kind of dark that is pleasant and peaceful. It is not the kind of solitude that is quiet and comforting. It is stabbing and suffocating. I am everywhere but I am nowhere. I leave the house but I am not engaged with anyone I meet. They see me, but they don't know me. They speak to me, but they don't understand me. No one can. I am traumatized. 

I've lost everything familiar, and my life as I knew it is over. As my children and I have started a new life from scratch, I have turned to my music. It's one thing that I know won't change. It helps me cope. How I have missed my music. I love to play it and to listen to it and to create it. For so long, I have neglected it, and in all this trauma, it has become a lifeline for me. Medicinal. I can take it with me. I have my own personal soundtrack. My soundtrack is messy and disorganized. It's eclectic. It's unpredictable, like my life now. 

A few hours ago I ran, dripping, soaked through, salty sweat pouring like tears streaming down my face as the soles of my feet pounded the elliptical into submission. For the hundredth time, I drank in this song: "My Heart is Broken." It reaches me in places I can't explain. It is not something I would typically post, and it likely it will not reach some of my readers. But like I said, my taste is eclectic. (For something a little softer, try "My Immortal," below -- same artist, different tone, also on my playlist today.) 

I love other happier, more uplifting music too. But let's be honest, not every day is sunshine and rainbows. Evanescence is soul music for me, and there have been days where I really crave it lately. It stirs me in deep places. Very therapeutic. Sometimes I just need an outlet. She gives me that. Her hard and soft sounds and images set against each other intrigue me and reflect the thoughts and feelings swirling in my heart and mind. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Open fields and prison walls. I am experiencing all of these in abundance. Both sides. Often it depends on the day, the hour, the minute.

What about you? Do you have songs or artists that help you cope? What is your "soul music" and why?