Waking The Fallen (2003) "Clairvoyant Disease"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Dust begins to fall, to the ground
The air is cold and thin
Thoughts are haunting me as I look around
This will never end and I'll bleed forever

Don't acknowledge right, just dwell on wrong
This spot in hell's where I belong
I've come so far - it's been so long
Don't know why it started or where it came from

Outside shell is strong - confident
But slowly eats away
Like a man plagued with disease, I try to fight
Through my pores it seems to seep...
I'll bleed forever

And you sit there and do nothing
You're content with doing nothing

There's nowhere to run and hide
when you're living to die
Stuck alone inside your head,
better off dead
The phone would ring in the empty house,
no one's around.

But in my life, I wanted more, I needed more
I taste more

There are two voices here, made more easily discernible when this poem is sung. One voice is the poet himself,

Thoughts are haunting me...
Outside shell is strong - confident...
I try to fight...
But in my life, I wanted more, I needed more
I taste more

The other voice is Depression,

I'll bleed forever...
Don't acknowledge right, just dwell on wrong
This spot in hell's where I belong
But slowly eats away
Like a man plagued with disease...
Through my pores it seems to seep...

Back and forth, the poet is stuck inside his head, torn between his desire to live and his haunting thoughts. He senses there is more, and he longs for it, but his thoughts want to dwell on what's wrong.

He rages,

I've come so far - it's been so long
Don't know why it started or where it came from

Then he turns in frustration at the climax of his jeremiad, screaming,

And you sit there and do nothing
You're content with doing nothing

Who is this person who holds him back? What is it the poet expects of this person? Is it himself? Is it his lover, his parent, his caregiver, his God? Is it fair for him to lash out at this person?

Freedom from depression comes with the transformation of truth washing the mind clean. Know the truth, believe it so deeply it becomes the way you see life, so that it becomes the way you think and live. No person can hold you back when you have the truth; no person can keep you stuck, but you may need to be willing to allow them to lag behind you as they grapple with truth in their own time.

Truth is available and knowable, it always has been. But there are forces of darkness that would have us believe otherwise, that would have us dwell on the wrong, to be ultimately dragged down into despair.

While it is true that sometimes those who suffer from depression also need medicine to help correct the chemical imbalances in their physical brain, it is always true that you will need truth for the health of your spirit and your soul. So says our Rescuer,

"Jesus turned to the ones who had claimed to believe in him. "If you stick with this, living out what I tell you...then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you"

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