During #resound11, we were asked what our theme sound for 2011 was and I chose ‘A Little Bit of Feelgood” by Jamie Lidell.

I stand by that, it’s totally where I was in 2011.

Krissie from Questions for Dessert chose “Dog Days Are Over’ and man that’s a great song and I can see why it’s a brilliant running song.

Currently my favourite running songs are ‘Tell It To Me’ and ‘Cocaine Habit’, which work brilliantly but I sing along and I’m pretty sure that the guys in the gym think that I’m exercising to get over a drug habit, which I’m not!  Dog Days Are Over is a slightly faster tempo and I’d love that to be next year’s theme song.  The Dog Days Are Over….but I can’t make it my song because of the lyrics.

A long time ago someone I thought a lot of told me that I thought too much about the lyrics of songs..he may have been right about this but he was wrong about so much else and I kind of dismissed his observation.  But this song has these lyrics…….

Run fast for your mother run fast for your father
Run for your children for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind you
Can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

And they’re great lyrics but I can never leave my love and my longing behind. They make me..Nic. They’re the things that make me want to survive. After Stef died, I thought I would, but my love for him  and my longing to be the person he saw in me kept me going. As did living with Sarah for 18 months and then my uncle for another 18 months. I speak to Mum every day and it was only last year, when she told me she got her girl back (an Ma B and I only came back because of the steel/love/bottom* that we got from you!). All of that gave me family and just simple acceptance when everything else was a mess, when friendships that were supposed to sustain me fell apart because of my need, the black hole of loss within me and that simple fact that I chose badly,  my uncle provided disinterested support, he and his kids are so close and they made me part of that, without actually making me part of it, which is just what I needed. My family, the people I was lumped with at birth (Ma & Ben) and the people I chose and who chose me – Sarah, Ryan, Christelle, Tina & Charles, Jo, Jane, Ruth, Kathy & Adam, Gill, Max and even the people I didn’t chose, who didn’t chose me but are family all the same – Lu, Oli, Michael, Tabs, Helene, Luc, Elly, Josh, Jane’s kids, Danielle, Murphy (anyone else, I might be missing…) they’re why I survived those years. My dog days  are finally over (I hope).  I’m ready to face the new world God created for me, but I survived the destruction of the old worlds because of my love and my longing, for Stef and for connection, for the hope that I might feel like that about someone else, for the hope that someone else might feel that for me, for the hope that I would find the life that God intended me to find, even if it wasn’t the life I had in mind. That love and that longing led me to hang on when I really wasn’t sure that I could, when not hanging on felt like it might be the easier option. Because of that, I feel like a person worth love, worth everything life can offer and I need new lyrics to that song if I want to run to it because me love and my longing are probably the only things I can’t leave behind…..

I need new lyrics…any suggestions?