Ever since I first heard this song from Imogen Heap’s album, “Ellipse”, I felt like there’s a greater truth within the words that’s waiting for me to find it and apply to my own life.
To me, the song speaks to my own life-long endeavors in their very undefined state and asking me if I’m doing anything about them in the midst of pain and imperfection. I’ve heard often that those life moments that define you actually happen between those big moments. It’s the sum of our lives that make us who we are, not just what we do in a fleeting moment in time. We can all act or pretend once in a while, but can we do it all the time?
However, when I first heard this song, what really struck me was how this spoke to my single life and how I was (and if I’m honest, still am) letting the pains of my past get in the way of living in the now. More specifically, this song forces me to ask the question of where I stand in the world of relationships and if I’m waiting for time to heal all the scars from a lifetime of seeing and experiencing broken relationships within my family and among friends. I’m pretty sure I’ve told myself that one day I’ll magically be ready for marriage and “being an adult.” But while I wait to heal and come to some very undefined place of readiness, I’m still living life; things don’t stop moving because I’m not ready for them to forge ahead.
So what am I going to do? Am I just going to wait it out, here in the wretched hollow, the endless in between?
Wait It Out by Imogen Heap
Where do we go from here?
How do we carry on?
I can’t get beyond the questions.
Clambering for the scraps
in the shatter of us collapsed.
It cuts me with every could-have-been.
Pain on pain on play, repeating
With the backup makeshift life in waiting.
Everybody says time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?
There’s nothing to see here now,
turning the sign around;
We’re closed to the Earth ’til further notice.
A Stumbling cliche case,
crumbled and puffy faced.
Dead in the stare of a thousand miles.
All I want, only one street-level miracle.
I’ll be a an out-and-out, born again from none more cynical.
Everybody says time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?
And sit here cold?
Well, We’ll be long gone by then.
And lackluster in dust we lay
Around old magazines.
Fluorescent lighting sets the scene
for all we could and should be being
in the one life that we’ve got.
(Ah, Ah, Ah)
In the one life that we’ve got.
Everybody says that time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out? sit Here?
Just going to Wait it out? Sit here cold?
Just going to sweat it out?
Wait it out.