Robert in Chicago

I don't want to live here

I really don't

I honestly never have
And I wanted to tell you that
But...

I know how bad you want
You just want
And you don't know
What you want

And you throw yourself
Up against big moves
And big changes
And big decisions
And you hope
That maybe you'll shatter
And you can figure out some way
To put yourself back together
Better than you were before

And I like you as is
I like you
And I like where we live
And I like our life
And I think the only reason you don't
Is because you don't know what to do about the fact
That what's killing us
Is internal

You can't deal with internal
So instead

It's the seasons
It's not enough sunlight
It's the raised rent
It's the insurance
It's the landlord
It's the traffic
It's the broken appliances
It's your job
It's the lack of stimulation
It's the economy
It's your family
It's my friends
It's that I don't listen
It's bullshit, you know?

It really is
It's bullshit

And what it really is
Has legs
And arms
And a plane ticket
And it will find us
In Chicago

And then what are you going to do?

Move to New York?
Move to Europe?
Move to a farm in New Guinea?

How much more do you have to isolate yourself from me?
How quiet does it have to be so that you can hear the parts inside yourself
That are screaming to be dealt with, you know?

No, I'm not perfect
But I'm aware, you know?
I'm really aware
Of how fucked up I am

I'm really aware
That there's no cure for it
Aside from time
And whatever strength I have in me
To deal with it

Because you can't help me deal with it
Because your cure for where we live is New York
And your cure for New York is L.A.
And your cure for L.A. is London
And you met me in London
And I became your cure for that
And now Chicago is the cure for me

And I know that
I'm not unaware
That eventually
I'm going to have to be sacrificed

That once you can't deny that where you are isn't the problem
Then who you're with is going to be the problem

Then you can bounce from boy to boy
Instead of place to place
And at least unlike metropolitan hipster-friendly cities
You'll never run out of boys

. . . . .

I wanted to stay with you in London
But even then I couldn't keep my eyes on you
WIthout you squirming

You couldn't be held down by anything
Or else you'd start biting your nails
And talking about the poems you were going to write
And the beaches you wanted to make love on

And I fell for it
I fell for it all

But I wanted to stay where we were

I wanted to get a cheap little apartment
And a crock pot
And a broken tv
And a cat named John
And I wanted to stay there forever with you

Because you were the only thing
I needed to live

You still are

And I'm not

So I made my ticket round-trip
Spent a little bit extra
So I could go somewhere else

I won't say home
Because I don't totally understand the concept of home

I'll miss you

But I miss you now
And you're standing right next to me

If I'm going to miss you
I might as well have a good reason for it

I can go back where we came from
Or maybe to London, pretend I'm an exchange student again
Or maybe find a beach somewhere
And sit on it

See if that does anything to me

See if I can finally cure myself