I haven't lived through a day where I wasn't in pain In so fucking long, it's insane And I'm starting to wonder why I still lay here and suffer What is the point? Why do I live? I just feel like my life is a prison I've been on death row Anticipating the nothing I'm so fucking tired of complaining I don't wanna whine There is no endgame No justice for a world self-destructive To each and every living being that it contains I'm just grateful I never knew Where the gun was hidden in my friends' parents' houses There are so many versions of my life Where I'm never writing this song So many versions of my life where I'm no longer here at all I've always felt like a regular person being burned alive By a fire that no one else can see The only war I'll ever choose to fight Will be against the voices on the inside That don't have my well-being in mind Nobody tells you Suffering isn't just a thing that happens to you It's a responsibility We become reflections of all the hurt embedded within us It's not always easy to turn that into kindness Lord knows it's not always easy To convert your pain into kindness The exchange rates are simply ridiculous

I could see you wanted to get better You wanted to live a life Devoid of fear, devoid of failure, But you couldn't quite reach a time You could see a light in the distance But even with your arms outstretched You couldn't quite reach it You couldn't quite hold it in your hands And I'm afraid, because we lived for the now And we've all lost that somehow I hope in your final moments You felt overwhelming love It's so unfair The world It just plows through us like snow And I wish you'd recovered From the storm that raged over The coast of the Carolinas It's not fair to blame all of the people that get destroyed by A world that doesn't care whether they live or die Oh no, I just want things to get better It was never the drugs It was a void created by the culture Communities can't succeed When individualism overshadows humanity I'm just tired of suffering being the default state of being For nearly everyone that's ever mattered anything to me

All that I've learned, there's no skeleton holding up truth All that I've learned is it's a crapshoot People get killed for no reason People get sent to jail that didn't do anything wrong So what's the point? Where is the justice in this cruelty Of widespread punitive power fantasy? The American way We're not okay Today we will deconstruct An ego poisoned by a culture that doesn't want you To extend outside of yourself We're all struggling to pay rent Struggling to get out of bed Struggling to balance all that races through our heads Is there an answer? What even is the question? It's all so goddamn disorienting That's what they want, they rely on us to fail The ruling class is lounging as the world spirals downward Grappling with chaos Grappling with pain Grappling with tragedy every single fucking day How do we survive after we realize All this conventional knowledge we have been surrounded by Our entire lives Was a complete and total bad faith lie?

It's easy to be a consumer But at the end of the day Who are you outside of culture? It's easy to be a spectator But who even are you Outside of your opinions on everything going on around you? What do you even do? Who are you? What do you plan to do with your ever-dwindling time? Are you too afraid to truly engage with the infinite uncertainty Of the ever-present anything? Do you just plan to spend the rest of your life Entrenching yourself in illusions? Products, conflicts, all the worlds we create To distract ourselves from the demons we refuse to face

A static image in your brain of an entire human being Where do we find the misguided confidence To act out in ways that only hurt? Oversimplify the lives we don't want to see Just so we don't have to do the work Why do we avoid the work?

You will waste so much time Protecting lies You've built yourself upon Too young to yet make sense Of the overwhelming everything It's not your fault It's easy to see yourself as a failure when you have failed It's easy to resign yourself to the loss It's easy to latch onto every last malignant thought But that's not you So much energy spent denying Your true conflicted inner self Trying to fill that mold of an obtuse world That never even respected you It's easy to conform to the destructive social norm It's easy to buy into the myth When reality is far more challenging The comfortable lie, well it becomes attractive If you think you are an exception Well, I'm sorry you are mistaken We're all just as easily captured as we are sold

If you see the world Through a prism of power and control Then every action becomes one of aggression Neighbors become oppressive We all become pawns in ideological games We all become disposable So what's the point Of making all this noise If it only seeks to disorient further The people with actual power Don't want you to trust your neighbor Bourgeois liberal lies, infesting the inside Bourgeois liberal lies are infecting your insides Bourgeois liberal lies, infesting the inside Bourgeois liberal lies, don't believe Love every single ugly, love every single ugly Love every single ugly, with open eyes Love every single ugly, love every single ugly Love every single ugly, just let mythologized purity die

Empathy is being murdered right before our eyes And we're all letting it happen I think we all underestimate our own Capacity to be manipulated What we call manipulation Can easily be a delusional person Trying to convince you of an earnest belief Just because someone's wrong Doesn't mean they have to be evil Just because someone hurt you Doesn't mean you should make them an object Of your own psychic torture Fallacy has been built up a fortress of fragile psyche And we've all just become passive I think we all overestimate our own Capacity to see genuine manipulation What we call manipulation Is often too satisfying to our brain things A dopamine rush to the face Just because something feels right Doesn't mean that it's righteous Just because something feels true Doesn't mean you aren't being fundamentally lied to In the end, it is likely The pain will remain The illness may never go away But it's never too late To escape the existential void you've been led into By a world hellbent on gaslighting you Every step of the way You survived You survived You survived You survived So why don't you just give yourself permission to be alive?

Every dude from your high school you thought was a scumbag May have grew up with a mother that beat him into silence Everyone that you've known All these people that you think you know What moments of tremendous pain Could they have lived through to carry Gut-wrenching specificities Why are we so caught up in the orbits of ego Denying the lives of the people That we refuse to truly see As if this world made a promise to us that it wouldn't be ugly As if anything good ever came from denying the humanity The restlessness of suffering The obstinance of ego Forever colliding Forever destroying All you can really do See a mirror image of your own face on everyone around you

Peer inside, what do you see? It doesn't always come out clearly What motivates what you believe? Does it truly represent The person that you know you need to be? To be Plunge within, what do you need? Are you communicating clearly? Passing off the blame is far too easy What tangible steps can you take To assure that you maintain being healthy? Healthy It's easy to stumble into Following in the missteps of everyone around you It's easy to stumble into Acting just like all of the people that have hurt you You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of destruction By destroying the explosion You can't rid this world of chaos By just trying to control it You can't face the pain within you By aggrandizing all that you've been through You can't rid yourself of suffering You can only become one with the knowing You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid this world of darkness You can only become a light You can't rid yourself of the darkness You can only forever search for a light

When I grew up, I wanted To be something so much bigger than I am now But now I understand that All I really wanted to be was Something better than I was yesterday And now I know that I Am so much kinder, so much more thoughtful Than I ever could have been When I was a dumbass selfish teenager You can grow up, or you can show up to the show And find a way to make it all about you You wanna jump off the stage Well dude, maybe we don't have the strength to carry you It's easy to be young and reckless when You don't quite have the foresight yet To realize everything you do has an effect On what the world will become tomorrow When I grew up I envisioned Big ass houses, no more stresses Everything would be so much easier out on my own That was just an illusion Fed to us by corporate stooges Ayn Rand was stupid

There is so much more tragedy that unites us There is so much more that we all have in common Than we could ever perceive What do you want to believe? That everyone is out to get you? Or that everyone is just preoccupied Fleeing the grasp of a monster that you can't see? What will you believe? There are no simple answers There is no easy labor But there is no other way Cause otherwise, nothing fucking gets done Don't let yourself stagnate Just let yourself change The world will be waiting Try not to show up late You can always get better You can always be kinder To the people beside you To the vulnerable child forever living within you