Behind-the-Song: Sallad pt.2 (Patreon)

*I still don't have the photos from this shoot* 🙃

Fun fact: this song is called Sallad / "Sad Ballad" because this chorus did not give me much to work with and I couldn't think of a better title...so I left it 😅

When my limbs shake and it gets hard to speak / When my mind aches and I'm feeling so weak / When my heart breaks in two

Well...knowing that this song is about me having seizures, this one feels pretty self-explanatory 😅 The first line is pretty clearly just "When I'm having a seizure"; for anyone who might not know, I am actually conscious for my seizures. Which makes them a little extra scary for me, but generally less dangerous. Because I'm conscious, though, I have some level of awareness of my surroundings and can hear, interpret, and respond when someone speaks to me. It just takes a lot more effort and is really slow and difficult.

The next line is about my migraines, but specifically how I feel after a seizure. My brain is screaming and my entire body feels depleted. It feels difficult to move at all. I especially hate when I have to pee after I've had a seizure because getting up to go to the washroom feels like the most impossible task 😅🙈 Don't worry, I have experience holding my pee... 😂

And the last line here is truthfully mostly just a filler line. I wanted to to rhyme and be approximately that number of syllables 😅 But I think it also very much speaks to the defeatedness of feeling so completely incapacitated so suddenly and so often. Being debilitated in ways that prevent me from... well, living my life 🤷‍♀️

When I wake up, but I wish I wouldn't wake up / It gets tough when you know you'll never be enough / How do you push through?

The second half of this chorus really leans a lot more into the mental health side of things. Even just with my physical health alone, I have been through a lot in my meager 28 years, and I've had my fair share of breakdowns and wanting to give up. I know it sounds dark, and it is. But the good thing is, I never did 🤷‍♀️ I guess I got to be the person I asked, "How do you push through?" 🙈

The middle line here, I think I've talked about before, particularly with "Clean Air." This is my most deeply held negative belief about myself. And I am very aware it comes up in my songwriting a lot 😅 Sorry not sorry 🤷‍♀️ I am working on it. Maybe someday I won't feel this way and can stop writing about it... or maybe I'll write about overcoming it instead and it'll just still end up sprinkled throughout all my music 😂