Change, She Draws Near

At thirteen I have braces, I am wearing all black, idolizing the one girl near me who could be considered “goth” and listening to Evanescence. In my head Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys are inauthentic and overly peppy. They could never understand me.
Then there is Evanescence, haunting lyrics and heavy music that seem to reach to the bottom of my soul and turn everything inside me outward. I stand in my room and scream the words to their songs, feeling the lyrics tear out of me. I think they could not be more poignant to where I am at if I wrote them myself.
Some of my family worry about my dark clothes and my fascination with the new girl, lets call her Autumn. Not my Mom though, somehow she always understood. Maybe one day I will remember to thank her for that.
I pulled away from some of my childhood friends, the other pulled away from me. Then there was Autumn. Beautiful, older and deep—she saw things in ways no one else ever did. I knew she was troubled, and I knew better than to follow her blindly. I also knew that no matter how damaged she was, she was authentic. When she was sent away I felt the loss deeply.
Four years, more than a hundred poems, and dozens of stylistic changes later I am wearing retainers—at least the braces are gone—I occasionally hear passing stories of Autumn and the kid she now has, I am in my last year of high school, and when preparing a costume for Halloween I actually have to go to the store to buy black pants since I do not have any. Life seems less catastrophic now. Funny how a few years will do that.
I hear Evanescence playing somewhere. I feel nostalgia’s pull and crawl under my bed, fighting off dust bunny’s, to find it. Dust bunny’s aside, I actually find it in my drawer.
Uploaded to my iPod, the music streams into my ears. I find the words come back easily. I sing along playfully, the desperation that used to cling to each track is gone. I even laugh at the end of a particularly dramatic song. For me, the once meaningful lyrics of Amy Lee now hold the same appeal as an episode of Blues Clues.
The track changes and “Everybody’s Fool” begins to play. I remember it was hardly a favorite. As I listen absently to the words and occasionally add my voice to it, something catches me. I actually hear the lyrics. All these years I assumed it was about a guy and passed over it. When I clearly hear her singing the word “she” I realize it is something entirely different than I imagined. The lyrics ring of betrayal, and they remind me of a particularly trying event in my life earlier that year.
Something about the new found meaning caused me to listen more closely. My favorite of their songs begins to play, and I find myself shocked. Radically so. Nearly three years of studying psychology and a special focus this semester on the development of adolescent female psyche is reflected in the words.
“Don’t say I’m out of touch, with this rampant chaos your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge, a nightmare I built my own world to escape.” (Evanescence, “Paper Flowers”, 2003). Amy Lee goes on to describe her dream world with imagery so whimsical it can be nothing but childish. It has taken me years to realize but the song I related to so long ago is about a fight to cling to childhood instead of letting go an embracing the scary adult world.
The psychologist Dr. Brad Sachs, in his book “When No One Understands”, talks about writing letters to a teenage girl who tried to kill herself. He revealed to her how she is going through the death of her childhood. This is a term I see over and over again in psychology. The era of the teenager is a process of letting the child die and becoming the adult. I find this concept echoed in the words from another of their songs. “If I smile and don’t believe soon I know I’ll wake from this dream. Don’t try and fix me, I’m not broken. Hello I am the lie living for you so you can hide. Suddenly I know I’m not sleeping. Hello I’m still here, all that’s left of yesterday.” (Evanescence, “Hello”, 2003) Each phrase is a familiar one. How many times do teenagers like myself hide behind smiles? How many parents have heard their adolescent girls scream “stop trying to fix me”? Vegas money’s on “a lot”.
At thirteen I believed “Hello” was about someone actually dying, now I hear it for the metaphorical death it is. As the young move from childhood into the borderline age before they cross over into adulthood, they feel as if they are dying. In a way a part of them is. Their dependent, immature, concrete thought process gives way to questions that will form the woman they will become. Like a snake shedding its skin, only more painful. From this branches the morbidity of teenagers, the fixation of death and sometimes even the attempts at suicide. This phenomena is portrayed in What about Bob? where the young boy Sigmund—named after Frued—is accused of having a death fixation by his father. He shouts, “Maybe I am mourning the death of my childhood.” (Buena Vista, 1991) This scene is a moment of funny because it is true.
Brad Sachs believed in helping his young patient navigate the loss of her innocent childish side, without actually taking her life. “Our blackest nights,” says he, “need not be fearfully avoided or frantically lit up, but instead can be allowed to gently overtake us so that we can learn to see n the dark and decipher the beauty and promise that calmly, faithfully, resides there.” (When No One Understands, 2007)
The words have meaning to me at thirteen for just that reason. I cut off friendships, as I proverbial cut off parts of myself to become who I was growing into. At the time I felt the music, now I am growing to understand it as it again takes on meaning. In dream analysis, tarot cards and literature alike death represents change. In little over three months I will become an adult, so it is little wonder the lyrics speak to me once again.