Lyrics for Lisa – Cross My Mind

Written by Alexis Oliasami

I know I haven’t been perfect but give it some time
cause not a single day goes by where you don’t cross my mind

Losing you did a number on me. I don’t know what number that is, probably well past infinite, and there are days when that number gets lower and I get a small reprieve from the gaping absence of your kindness and other days when it skyrockets and I can barely breathe without you. But there is never a day I don’t think about you.

It feels like a cruel joke to have grown to love you as wholly and purely as I did in my childhood only to have you swiped from under me in the early hours of my adulthood. You never get to see the person I become, and I never get to go to you for guidance as I surmount challenges I recognize as ones that plagued you too. I have, so so many times, cried out desperately for your kind words and empathy for those who were in pain as you were.

I see a lot of you in my depression. After you were gone, I went to some dark places and heard your words of pain echoing in my ears as I went through the tunnel myself. I tried so hard to chase after your voice but it is always two steps ahead of me. Trying to catch up to it has left my feet raw and bloody and yet I can’t stop chasing you. Maybe I think you hold some answers for me, that even though I can’t go to you for help anymore, maybe understanding you a little better could unlock some understanding of myself. Maybe, I thought, you were the thing that could save me, even in death.

And we spend our lives looking for things we can’t find
but not a single day goes by where you don’t cross my mind

I developed social anxiety in my first year of college. I know it was a large burden on your shoulders too, from a much earlier age than it was for me. I became petrified of going out in public for fear that everyone was looking at me and judging me. I struggled to make friends and maintain those relationships because I thought they all secretly hated me. It’s a very isolating kind of panic when you’re too scared of the people around you to even cry out for help. I wanted so badly to talk to you about it.

You and I are the same in many ways, one of these being our endless search to feel not just accepted by those around us, but wanted. All you ever wanted from the people around you was to feel understood, warts and all, and I struggle every day with the same feelings of inadequacy and shame at my own mental state. I haven’t been perfect. I coped in unhealthy ways at times and retreated into myself. I let the pain of losing you eat me up like a corrosive acid but how could I have not? You would never have imagined how missed you would be but here we are, all of us aching for you. It has debilitated me at times, brought me to stand at the edge of the abyss to shout your name and beg for an answer.

There is so much about living I don’t understand, not least of all how to make it hurt just a little less. Depression and anxiety, as you knew as well as I do, change you as a person. They steal your sense of self, your confidence, your sense of safety. “We spend our lives looking for things we can’t find,” the song says. And when we can’t find that last piece of sanity we thought we had left or the love of the people we care about, we act out. We sink into the darkness and decide maybe we’re fine with being there, because the light is blinding. Once you grow comfortable in the darkness, it’s easy to stay there because it’s all you know.

It’s so dark without you.

I haven’t been perfect, Lisa, but give it some time. I have to have hope that I will be okay because it’s the days when I don’t that really destroy me. I can’t allow myself to entertain the idea that I will feel this way forever because, if that’s true, what’s the point of it all? It kills me inside knowing that you weren’t able to find that happiness that was out there waiting for you somewhere, because you of all people deserved to. You had a pure heart, and that lack of reciprocity for your good nature is enough to make anyone disillusioned with their reality. I wish so often that I could tell you that I understand now, that I see you and the pain you were in, that you were never alone even when you felt like it. I know how it feels and I would give up the rest of my life just to hold your hand for a single day and tell you that I am here, I know it hurts, and I love you anyway. Warts and all.