Take me as I am

Take Me As I Am - Lyric Video

I’m quite sensitive. I know that I can appear confident and self-assured and you can be forgiven for thinking that I’ve got it all together.  I’ve been wearing that mask since I was a small child.  Hold it together. Hold it in.  Hold back the tears.  Give the illusion of strength.  Show no weakness.  I’m actually quite the opposite.  On the inside, I am full of feelings. Constantly.  They swirl around inside me sometimes until I feel dizzy.  

Songwriting seems to help.  Songwriting for me takes the edge off the overwhelm and helps me to make sense of all the things inside that don’t make sense.  However, I often feel misunderstood. I struggle with my sense of self-worth. I feel like a complete imposter and at the deepest level I just want to be known, loved and accepted the way I am.  Which is intense, emotional, highly-sensitive and often overwhelmed.  It’s also loving, generous, kind, deep, rich and empathic.  

My highs are high, my excitement palpable.  I can be fearlessly driven and motivated, full of energy, bubbly, and almost ridiculous when I’m on a high. Everything I feel is intense.  So after the high, when the low arrives, my god can it be all-consuming.  I’ve struggled with this.  I have always felt like I can be useful and fun when I’m high - thus worthy of love.  It’s the lows where I feel I have no use, I’m not worthy of your time, your affection or your love.  I’m a drag. I’m empty, hollow, fragile.  I can feel the bird of loneliness scratching away at my insides, laying it’s stone eggs, weighing me down and I feel like I become someone else. Someone I don’t want to acknowledge myself even because acknowledgement means I’m aware and thus responsible for the thorough drag I am on everyone around me. 

I’ve also learned that it’s not true.  Sometimes it’s just my propensity for depression that tells me lies.  My own insecurities tell me that the slower, grounded, peaceful, paced version of myself is boring, dull, and burdensome to those around me.  But it’s who I am.  I am both my darkness and light, shimmer and shade.  I am cold and warm. I am, dare I admit it - human. 

Hating myself during a low period is neither helpful nor pleasant.  It serves no purpose. It doesn’t make the ride easier. In fact, it’s the very thing that turns what would be a low-energy cycle into depression and despair.  Life is not one long, never-ending sprint.  It’s both a marathon and a series of sprints.  I can’t expect myself to run, full pace, full of energy all the time. It doesn’t work like that - for any of us.  Yeah, we all share our highlight reels. We all share the good times.  Sweet stuff all of us share the lows; we don’t have the energy to put it in a reel when we’re low.  That’s the point.  We’re low on energy, we must conserve it if we are to continue without burning out and diving headfirst into the abyss. 

I wrote the song ‘Take Me As I Am’, out of a desire to be loved.  Not just on my high-energy days. Not just when I’m taking over the world.  Not just when my hair and makeup is done, when I’m bright and energetic and buzzing.  But when I am messy.  When I am spent.  When I am feeling broken and lost.  When I am navigating another disappointment.  When I feel like I can’t go on.  I need to be loved then more than any other time.  

I have always feared abandonment.  I’ve always feared that if I brought my whole self to the table, I would be rejected.  I would be shunned.  Left once again, to my own devices. It has taken me forty years to not reject these parts of myself.  Forty years to get to the point where I can look myself in the mirror on a bad day and declare that I am still worth looking after.  That I am loveable.  That I am worth loving even if I look like a mess.  Even if I can’t stop crying.  Even if I’m not ok. Even if the loneliness bird has laid a thousand eggs of stone in my chest. I am worth loving.  

Paradoxically, the acceptance of myself has meant that I let people in. I have stopped wearing the mask so much.  Of course, there are times that it’s still very much appropriate to smile and nod and wear the mask purposefully, but it’s not welded to my face.  I’m not trying to pretend to be rainbows and unicorns and feeling incredibly lonely because no one has any clue who I really am or what I’m really going through.  I’m finally able to say to my friend as we go for a walk that I am absolutely forcing myself to go on purely because I know I’m in dire need of the endorphins that I don’t feel well.  That I am sad.  That I’m grieving.  Being able to let people in and drop the pretence means I’m not chronically lonely. 

I am able to sit with my partner and cry even if I can’t explain what the hell is going on, I just need to cry.  It means he’s able to (although confused), hold me until the wave passes and I am able to seek that comfort when I need it and actually be comforted. 

I am able to be silly on days when I’m high and laugh at myself.  I’m able to offer myself grace when I need it the most and be gentle towards my own heart because I know that I am sensitive, that’s ok (in fact sometimes it’s actually my superpower) and that this too shall pass.  It always passes. And because I also know that if I am not afraid of the darkness, I can traverse it better, more freely and with the ability to use it for growth, to mine the diamonds that I use for songs, stories and connections with others who travel this path too. 

I wrote this song asking for acceptance from others. To be taken just as I am. The true gift was accepting myself, and beginning to love myself unconditionally which has enabled me to actually let the love in from others that was there all along. 

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Lyrics:

Take me as I am, all the different bits 

Take me when I’m mad, and when I get over it 

Take me when I’m spent, take me when I’m weak

Take me when I’m down so low,  I can hardly speak

Take me when I’m high, higher than a kite 

Take me when I’m laughing, at everything in life 

Take me when I’m strong, taking on the world 

When I feel I don’t belong, let me know I still have worth

Oooh, ooh 

Take me as I am, all the ways you can 

Take me when I’m sad, and when I don’t give a damn

Take me through the dark, when I am full of fear 

Take my different parts, so they don’t disappear 

Take me when I’m glad, when I’m hopeful and I’m pleased 

Take me when I’m bad, when I’m full of my disease

Take me when I shine, brighter the sun

Even when I’m wrong, let me know I’m still the one

Everyone in life that I’ve believed in

Only wants the lighter side of me 

I need someone who knows that even rainbows 

Come with both the sunshine and the rain 

Oooh 

So take me as I am, and you will know me then

Anyway you can, Take me as I am.