Music Heals

My friend made me a mix CD that was waiting for me when I walked in the door from Lesotho. Our taste in music is extremely different so I always looked forward to what her mix is composed of, typically it's happy girly music--exactly what the doctor ordered for this moment. Track number six is from the musical Next to Normal called "You Don't Know." The lyrics could not capture a better describition of my emotions.

Do you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?
Do you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead?
It's like living on a cliffside not knowing when you'll dive.
Do you know, do you know what it's like to die alive?
When the world that once had color fades to white and gray and black.
When tomorrow terrifies you, but you'll die if you look back.

You don't know.
I know you don't know.
You say that you're hurting, it sure doesn't show.
You don't know.
You tell me let go.
And you may say so, but I say you don't know.

The sensation that you're screaming, but you never make a sound.
Or the feeling that you're falling, but you never hit the ground.
It just keeps on rushing at you day by day by day by day.
You don't know, you don't know what it's like to live that way.
Like a refugee, a fugitive, forever on the run.
If it gets me it will kill me, but I don't know what I've done.

Updated to add: A fellow PCV thinks these lyrics are horribly depressing, and reading over them I suppose they are. On the flip side the music to accompany these lyrics is incredibly upbeat. And they are heartbreakingly honest, real, uncoated, all ideas I am a huge fan of.