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The Battle (Empathy for Another's Struggle)
What can I say about how to deal when your world feels fragile and shattered?
When the cloth of your life hangs torn and tattered.
When what and who you are and know breaks apart and scatters.
What do you do when the thing you can’t have seems to be all that matters?
I know you’ve looked in the mirror and wondered who it is staring back at you.
And then asked of that strange reflection, “what is there to do?”
I’ve been where you are, have felt what you feel—this suffering isn’t yours alone.
I know the torture, how it burns like napalm when the wrong place feels like home.
Temptation is the home to hell, and how you feel is hell’s keeper.
It’ll open the door, invite you to warm by the fire, and smile as you sink deeper and deeper.
I know the agony of knowing the love you feel is totally out of bounds.
I know the war waged within from the guilt that nips at your heels like rabid hounds.
And the self-deprecation is horror; she’s a vicious and merciless bitch.
She’ll tell you that you deserve the pain, bathe in your tears, bask in the blood from the wounds she convinces you to self-inflict.
She’ll make you think that torn, broken and conflicted is the way things have to be.
But you can beat her—kill her off—because you have more power than she.
It’s a hard and bitter thing, and you think, “I’d be rich if only each tear paid a dime.”
But all I know, and all I can say is, “give it time, baby, give it time.”
I’m begging you to just give the minutes a chance to prove what I’m saying is true.
Let the hours do their job; let the days, weeks and months spread out to heal you.
The only way to do good is to not put yourself in the position of wrong.
Yeah, that high road is a hard one; it may leave you scarred, but it’ll make you strong.
All this talk of should and shouldn’t, I know, easier to say than to do it.
But sometimes you gotta listen to your head, and eventually your heart will catch up to it.
And once it does, you’ll claw yourself out, open your eyes and see new day breaking.
You’ll pull yourself up, shake yourself off, and grab hold of the happiness that’s yours for the taking.
The right thing, it ain’t always easy, but the doing of it always feels right.
And in the end on the other side of misery, you’ll find that it was worth the fight.
