Show Teeth - Blue Clay lyrics

By: Marilyn H. What's remarkable about me? I don't know. The people around me have different opinions and reasons and examples to answer that question for you. I couldn't do it myself. Nothing about me is original, I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known. People are not only themselves. Without others around us, we wouldn't be complete. We would be flat paper cut­outs of people, cluttering up wastebaskets and sidewalks. We are changed by every encounter, every cruel remark, every soft smile, every time we cry ourselves to sleep. Each event is seared into our memory, branded into our hazy daydreams. The disappointed faces, the disgusted looks, the questioning eyes. That first time on a swing, your feet touching the sky for a split second, finally walking on those clouds that always seemed so far away. Every time you got scared from a police siren, because they had the power to take away your family and break it forever. That time in you lived in a blue tarp tent, not a house, making everyday feel like an adventure. See how things change you? Like the first time you stole something, a second cookie from the jar at preschool. That transformed into candy, earrings, necklaces, sodas, pens, rings, and notebooks. You were hooked. You were broken. Then someone came along and gave you the courage to stop. It changes you. Forever. Put down the razor blade, put down the bottle, put down the cigarettes. Using something to forget, even if just for a blissful moment, all of the awful things that have happened to you, somehow ends up hurting you more. The things that changed you with scars on the outside, and scars on the inside. The type that don't fade. The first time you looked in a mirror and only half­hated the person you saw. The first time you stood up for yourself, instead of letting them smash your face into a wall or a mirror or their fists again, to give you another black eye to match the purple bruises on your arms and the circles under your eyes. The first time you saw a dead body, in a car crash, the driver limp through the windshield, glittering gla** scattered like fallen stars on the oily asphalt. The first time you ran away. The second time you ran away. The first time you wished you were dead. The first time you realized most of these things happened before you were seven years old. You share these experiences and memories with everyone around you. The person who helped you stop. The person who proved you weren't as awful as you thought. The person on the street who smiled at you for no reason. The first person that understood your pain and not to ask you about your past or your parents or whatever happened before you were in third grade. That isn't you anymore. Now it's a different name, different family, no bruises, more scars. You're like a soft blue piece of clay, being picked up and remolded and reshaped by each person you let into your life, some more than others. Someone you knew for years and never talked to before could end up being the reason you're still alive. You could change the way someone thinks with a note in their locker. YOU also change people's lives everyday. So when life knocks you down, roll over and look at the stars.