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Juliana Hatfield - "So Alone"
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On one hand, this song was inspired by a person I know who struggles with a mental illness that makes him very scared and paranoid, sometimes. And he tries to hide his fear and paranoia -- and the voices in his head -- from people, when they flare up, because he doesn't want people to know. He thinks his problem is somewhat shameful, and dangerous, and that people wouldn't understand- and wouldn't want to know- what he goes through. I imagine him having nights like these -- like the one in the song.
On the other hand, the song is totally autobiographical. I am singing about a very long, dark, difficult night in which I was having a kind of an anxiety attack alone in my apartment. My heart was beating way too strongly and sort of irregularly, as one's heart does when in the throes of an anxiety attack. I was sure that I was about to have, or was having, a heart attack. I desperately wanted to distract myself from this terrifying, foreboding pounding of my heart and so I tried calling the few friends I could think to call (like it says in the song, I have pushed many people away and out of my life, over the years), but none of them answered -- I got only voice mail or answering machines. For the most part these were people I hadn't spoken to in months, and so of course I couldn't very well bust out and ask that they "call me right back I'm freaking out I'm scared I think I'm dying please help me" because that would sound insane, especially coming from someone who hadn't been in touch in a while, and it would be putting too much of a burden on these people, none of whom I was in the habit of asking for -- or unburdening -- anything. And so I sat there in my apartment, really scared, hyper-tuned in to all these weird, unpleasant sensations that seemed to have overtaken my body -- besides the heart feeling like it was about to explode, I felt kind of nauseous and also my lower back hurt a lot, out of nowhere, and so of course I was convinced that I had cancer which had spread to my spine. I just felt generally really wretched and doomed and I was convinced I was dying and I had no one to talk me down or to help take my mind off of this terrible (temporary) reality. I really wanted to go to sleep and escape the nightmare of the night but sleep was out of the question with my worried mind and heart racing. At some point I poured myself a shot of Jameson, hoping to calm myself. But my anxiety was so strong that the shot had little effect. So I took an Ambien.
And then, as I sat on the couch, waiting/hoping/praying for the sleeping pill to take effect and save me from my misery and terror, I started to hallucinate. (Maybe an effect of the sleeping pill mixed with the drink?) There was originally a whole other verse of "So Alone" describing my hallucinations at that moment but I ended up removing this part because it made the song too long and it made me sound a little too insane.
What happened was this: the whole room came alive. The walls and floor started undulating, as if the rug on the floor in front of me was floating on water, and the walls were making the same sort of rippling motions. And then I suddenly had the sense that every piece of furniture in the room was a living, breathing being; each with its own distinct personality. I was sitting on the couch and I turned to my left and started talking to the chair there- a really cool, stylish Danish modern rocking chair that is one continuous curved line of wood shaped like a "J". I was convinced that this chair was alive and sentient and that it was intelligent and that it would listen to me and that we could have a conversation. At that point I was starting to fade away -- the Ambien was kicking in -- and so I don't remember what I said to the chair. I wish I could recall, because it was probably hilarious.
Tags: Juliana Hatfield
