All I Know So Far by P!nk

While I was pregnant with William, my life included a lot of driving. I would drive to work 5 days a week and two of those days, I would drive an hour each way to attend classes in St. Cloud. I was determined to finish the goal I had set for myself a couple years before to earn a bachelor’s degree in English. I had decided this goal after graduating with my associates degree in creative writing. Plus, driving an hour each way wasn’t so bad for me. I didn’t mind being in the car. It was just me and the baby. I’d sing a handful of songs LOUDLY for my son or daughter to hear (we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl.) One of them was this song by P!nk.

I would place my hand on my belly when the song would begin, starting when I wasn’t even showing just yet to the day before he was born. Singing this song each time. The way the song starts with admitting that “I wasn’t born a renegade” and “I still feel afraid, but stumble through it anyway” felt absolutely perfect. I had been diagnosed and living with mental health issues for over a decade before that point and those words seemed to describe that so deliberately. “Dive right into the pain” was another one of the lyrics that caught me every time because that’s the hardest lesson I had to learn up to that point- not to shy away from how bad it all hurt, but to acknowledge it and accept it. Each time I listened to those lyrics, I thought of the life I would be apart of; the life of the little person Alex and I had created. I was scared and also happy to be able to share and teach the ideas of this song with that baby, because I wish they had been taught to me. I would smile and let tears fall almost every time I sang, “Let the walls crack ’cause it lets the light in.”

Then, when William was born, I longed to get the chance tell him all of those things. Tell him that even if his heart wasn’t doing the right job and he would always have a healed “crack” down his chest, it was going to be okay. Even though it hurt, it wouldn’t hurt forever. And I didn’t just long to tell him, I actually did tell him about how scared I was, but how I was “stumbl[ing] through it anyway.” I would put my hand on his belly and sing this song for him in his hospital room, with others in there or not, to try and remind him of those drives with just the two of us; before all of the machines and pokes with a needle. I would try and remind him that I was still there and always would be.

Then, one afternoon, as I listened to this song with him as he looked right at me, I realized that this song wasn’t mine to William, it was William’s song to me. I distinctly remember sucking in a gasp of air as we stared at each other. It was the chorus that triggered this realization, “when they dress you up in lies and you’re left naked with the truth. You throw your head back and you spit in the wind, let the walls crack ’cause it lets the light in…and when the storms out, you run in the rain. Put your sword down, dive right into the pain. Stay unfiltered and loud….” Then, the second verse ended with, “And even I can’t teach you how to fly, but I can show you how to live like your life is on the line.” I fell apart, right there while letting William’s fingers hold on tight to my pointer finger. He was still awake, but getting tired, so I ran my free pointer finger along his eye brow to encourage his eyes to close.

Something that was unique about William was the amount of expression in his eyes. And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mom. We had quite a few people tell us that while he was alive and even now since he’s been gone. For a three-month-old who couldn’t move much of his body, how he was feeling wasn’t a secret to anyone around him. The best way I know how to justify this is that he had an old soul. And one that my heart recognized more and more as time went on. So, when he got tired, I recognized that too, and wanted nothing more than to help him rest. It was a lot of work for him to be awake physically, but I also knew that the emotions of the people around him must be exhausting. They were exhausting for me and I wasn’t the one in the hospital bed.

My older brother had told me a couple weeks before I had this epiphany that while keeping William’s room as light as possible was good for everyone in there, including William, it was also important to cry. He encouraged me to express the unending love I have for my son with him in any way it came up, because that’s all that matters in life. The amount of hurt I carried around with me everyday was a direct reflection of the love; it was good to let William see and feel that. Love is always good. So the day William’s sleepy eyes said this song was for me, I let myself express my love for William; the little human I had carried with me all those months before and sang to, in the form of tears.

Right when I agreed to let the tears keep coming and right before my sweet William finally closed his eyes, the most beautiful part of this song played, “I will be with you till the world blows up… up and down and through till the world blows up… When it’s right or it’s all fucked up, till the world blows up, till the world blows up.” As I watched him drift off to sleep, I turned the volume down, but tears turned into weeping and I kept listening. I closed my watery eyes and remembered singing this song to him the day before he was born- in the car again. I turned onto our street a couple blocks down from our house and I let my hand drift back and forth after the song ended and said, “Okay, little one. It’s me and you. We can do this.” Then, when I opened my eyes a few seconds later, I saw his eyes were open for just a moment again and I could almost hear him say, “Till the world blows up.” I hold onto that memory because the world hasn’t blown up yet, which means he’s still with me.