Writing songs and the pain these emotions brings

I sat in Starbucks tonight writing lyrics to songs I've had written over the last year.

Writing lyrics is the most difficult part of composing a song for me. I'm great at expressing emotion through melody, but I'm never happy with the words I use to display that emotion. This is why it takes me years to write songs, and why they remain so personal to me. I am happy with the melody; others can't translate.

Writing songs, for me, is an outpouring of real emotion. It's an almost tangible reminder of the experience. Each person I write a song about is a sentient being in my life, whether or not they still exist. I can still feel their aura.

I composed three songs; one about Jenna, one about Giselle, and one about Sarah.

Jenna's song was written last year. In fact, I wrote a blog when I came up with the melody. It's taken until now to finally piece together deserving lyrics. It was written with the mentality that when I was called to combat overseas in July 2009, my life would end, and my life would flash before me, and she was the only person I loved who ever loved me back. At 25, my life would end, and she would be my only definition of love. The thing about the song that gets me is how one person can ENORMOUSLY effect somebody else's life, while vice versa, that person is but a drop in their ocean. It's like the movie VANILLA SKY. Tom Cruise dwells on the love that "could have been" had he not gotten in that car with Cameron Diaz. In reality, it was only one passion filled night.

Giselle's song is written in a more sorrow, remorseful way. It's watching a beautiful girl, with a brilliant mind, deteriorate before my eyes. It's watching your best friend get into a fatal car accident, and having no way to stop them. She's slowly dying, and there's nothing I can do to save her. Her heart, her soul, her hopes, her dreams are all fading. How do I know? I don't. I can only go based on what I saw.

Sarah's song is written from my perspective, watching at her wedding as she marries a man that isn't me. When I first met her, I felt a crazy aura around her, like she was going to be something big in my life. I was right, but it wasn't in the way I hoped. The song is me singing about how I passed up the opportunity to have this girl, and the second I hesitated, she found a man she loved for the rest of her life.

It's painful writing songs and poetry about people that have had an effect on you. It makes me wonder if these people ever think about me. Do they even have time to let me pass through their head?

I only have time to think about them during down time. Since my new job started, I've had little to no down time. But when I sit down to write songs, I have no choice but to be inspired them, or to be tortured by them. I relive their warm body touching mine, kissing me, making me think we'd be forever, only to watch my heart be murdered by their leaving.

Here I am, in 2010, writing about a girl I loved in 2002. A girl I slept with in 2002, and 2008. And then a girl I fell in a drunk, Limoncello inspired love with in 2007.

But you can't choose what inspires you. It just happens.

The only way to go with it, is to never take for granted EVERY magic moment you have. Enjoy every second you have with a person you feel emotions for. It may be all you have for the rest of your life, and it's a long, cold, lonely life ahead.