#drink deep

Listening to Florence + the Machine's "You Can Have It All" on her new album, Everybody Scream, is already an emotional and cathartic experience even as a woman who hasn't experienced an ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. But then my brain had to listen to the lyrics, the music, and the screams in the background and associate them with something more personal for me. My chronic pain and illnesses. My broken body. And having come into that song after the other songs like "Sympathy Magic", "The Old Religion", and "Drink Deep" just made it kick me in the chest harder. So that as she sang and the music built, I also felt the urge to scream. To just scream because my body is not my own. It has betrayed me. It has left me less of a woman as I feel confined to my body and my home. Struggling with the grief and the pain while knowing and wanting to live. I found myself wanting to fill a hole in the backyard with a scream. I cannot have it all. I am limited because I feel so sick and in so much pain all the time. And so, I, too, want to scream. I rearrange the furniture for something to control. Memory fails me; I no longer recognize myself when I look into the mirror. I need freedom from the body, freedom from the pain, to no longer be careful and still.

I’ve listened to Drink Deep a normal amount of times (lying)