See My Bones

I suffered from anorexia from 2004 to 2009, and in that time I searched but never found any songs that I felt really reflected my experience. I found songs about healing and recovery, but that’s not what I wanted to listen to. I wanted to find a song that made me feel someone understood my pain, my struggle. I didn’t want a song to tell me everything was going to be all right, because, I didn’t feel like I could be normal again, and, I didn’t want to be ‘better’. That’s part of the paradox of having anorexia, not wanting to be rid of your disease. Even when you hate it, even when you want it all to stop, there’s still a part of you that loves it, that doesn’t want to let go. Even though you do all these things to control yourself, the deeper you get the more out of control you actually are.

Because See My Bones a confrontational song, I had a few people suggest that I give it some kind of positive resolution at the end…. Some kind of sentiment to the affect of “I’m okay now” or “you can get overcome this”. I thought about this a lot. In the end I decided I didn’t want to close the song with that kind of statement for two main reasons. Firstly, because I’m alive and healthy. People can see that, so they can see there’s a positive end to the story in that way. Secondly, and more importantly, when I was sick the last thing I wanted to hear were people telling me things were going to ‘be okay’… like if you’re depressed and people tell you to cheer up...

Thanks to Les Thomas for asking me about this song... the words above are from the interview for Unpaved... I was really inspired reading Les' blog about mental illness recently... thanks to other friends who've encouraged me to put this song out there and thanks to my family who supported me through being an absolute narcissistic basket case. It's almost unfathomable now to think about what it would be like to watch your child walk a tight rope on the edge of death. 

X Cathryna