I’d like to tell you, if you’ll permit me,
Something that sounds perhaps a little crazy

You see, sometimes
When I’ve been really happy
When I’ve been lucky
When all has been good
And for a while the sun has shined
On my little corner of the world

I start to feel this monster rise up inside of me
Triggered by the sunshine and rays of happy

And it threatens me with rain whenever sun abounds
It threatens me with cold whenever warmth surrounds
It comes out to warn me, to tell me what is wrong
What I’m missing, what I don’t see, what’s been gone for too long

And then I do see it as soon as it speaks
I see and I know it instantly
I know that such sunshine cannot always be
That this many happy things were not meant for me

I come to my senses and it hurts while it heals
Because I’d forgotten for too long how awareness feels
How the rain and the cold can comfort and hold
How the tears can set free all those feelings untold

Because the monster, you see, is just a voice inside me
It’s nothing more than a part of my own psyche
That needs the darkness to balance the light
And highlights the wrong to level the right
Because my spirit needs something to fight
To challenge and steady all of its might

And we, my monster and me
Are two of a kind, a kind of package deal
You can’t only have one and have that be real
It would only ever be temporary
Until the good has gone on too excessively

And then the monster comes calling again
Reminding me what I left in my other jeans
Put through the washing, folded and forgotten
Till I wear out and tear out these splitting seams

Then stripped bare again, I remember what it means
That it’s not a full life if I’ve been living only dreams
Sometimes you have to wake up and see everything
The good and the bad and everything in between

Nothing is sacred or always sunshine
No life is ever good all of the time
And a life of pure happy could never be mine
Because my monster needs that decline to unwind
And I’ll forever have such depths in my mind

I need to remember if I ever again find
A life full of that happy bright dumb luck sun
One can only assume is a fluke in someone’s trust fund
That I sure don’t deserve, though I’ve worked for the won
And still feel full fixed by tasers set to stun

Remember in that moment the long forgotten one
My monster within me who comes to steady me some
And without which I’d come completely undone

Now if you here this and think me disturbed
I’m surely no more crazy than others you’ve heard
And I’d wager a gambling there’s more in this gathering
Who feel such a monster inside of them too
Well, how about it, do you?