Day 4 -- A Song That Makes You Sad
"I Need to Be in Love" -- The Carpenters, A Kind of Hush (1976)
Before I write about today's song, I want the following to be known: In the big picture of my life, I have only very recently stopped being sad. That is all owed to Tyler. This is not just because I have a man in my life now who loves me, it is also because he has shown me a different perspective on life. If something bad happens, it's usually my natural inclination to get sad instead of flaming pissed. And I used to enjoy it. There was comfort in sadness. It felt good to feel bad, to feel low. I do not feel that way now. I do not like to purposefully watch something or listen to something that brings me down. Therefore, this is not an enjoyable category to write about, but it's part of the challenge, so here we go...
"I Need to Be in Love" was Karen Carpenter's favorite song in the entire Carpenters discography. From the title you can gather that it is about a woman who thinks it's time she find real love because she's wasted too much time in casual relationships. She is lonely and feels she is destined to remain alone because her standards are too high. Karen's brother Richard, painfully aware of his sister's insecurities and issues with men, wrote this song specifically for her. Sort of rude, right? Yeah...but she loved it. Like I said, it was her favorite song.
Yes, the song is sad in and of itself and even if you knew nothing about Karen Carpenter, it would still probably make you sad. And in the days when I could relate to "I Need to Be in Love", I enjoyed getting sad to it. I enjoyed the shared comraderie between Karen Carpenter and I. The line "I'm wide awake at four a.m. without a friend in sight/I'm hanging on a hope, but I'm all right" was totally me. I wasn't the only one desperate for love. Misery loves company and all that.
But here's what makes me sad now. Karen Carpenter was a complex woman with a lot of problems. She wanted both fame and a cozy suburban family life. She was very open about this, apparently, as her brother knew enough to write a song about it. It makes me sad that she liked making herself sad. She liked having everyone know how lonely and desperate for love she was. She liked (let's say it together now) being the victim. But unlike, say Taylor Swift, a man isn't to blame. Karen Carpenter is the victim of her own inadequacies. (Which is par for the course in anorexics.)
Here's me nitpicking: The song is also...inactive? I guess that's the word. The singer knows she should be in love, wants to be in love, but doesn't make plans to change her situation. There's no line about "tomorrow I'll go looking" or whatever. She's content to stay lonely because sadness feels good to her. She refuses to do the one thing that will make her feel better. She is an emotional masochist.
I used to relate to this song. I used to be living this song. And so yes, when I think of this song it reminds me of sad times and therefore, has the possibility to make me sad. If I let it. But I don't let it. I look at my life now and how far I've come and have absolutely no reason to feel sorry for myself. It still makes me sad for Karen Carpenter though. That can't be helped. I also think of how close I came to living out the rest of my life with the same attitude. Luckily Tyler helped me pull my head out of my ass. Thanks, Babe!
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