I just want to feel everything

When I need to sing, I listen to Fiona Apple. By now I have mostly memorized her first two albums (3rd was less impressive) - not only is she awesome, but she sings in my range and with such emotion, and when I need to sing, it is usually related to emotions. So I was excited to hear her new song, Every Single Night, which is particularly awesome and which prompted me to get tickets to her show (and I never go to shows). I like the sparsity of the instrumentation, the accents of percussion, and the sudden fullness of vocals when she sings "brain" in the chorus. This was a new Fiona Apple and I was very excited.

And then I read the lyrics! It turns out that this song expresses much of my life. From worrying way too much about what other people are thinking, to not being able to go to sleep unless I can distract myself from the constant barrage of my thoughts, to "I just want to feel everything."

In the song, this is first expressed in terms of a curse or a burden. "The pain comes in" and "I can't fit the feelings in. Every single night's alight with my brain." Then, "my breast's gonna bust open... I just made a meal for us both to choke on. Every single night's a fight with my brain." Opening yourself up to the multitude of feelings, the immensity, is a difficult and painful process. Most of the time when I realize what I'm doing (worrying) I wish it would stop, but it doesn't. So I fight with my brain and continue to worry, and try to go to sleep.

But after a while, "maybe I'd relax; let my breast just bust open. My heart's made of parts of all that surround me... Every single night's alright..." This acceptance of the abundance of feeling occurs much less often than the worrying. Even though I identify with the concept of opening the heart (chakra) and feeling everything, it is not a sustainable state of being. You can't experience the "pure being ball thing" all the time, and so you get swept back into the drama of human suffering - or what I like to call being alive.  So it is fitting that what the phrase "I just want to feel everything" reminds me of is when the souls in the Golden Compass trilogy finally die:

They... held out their arms as if they were embracing the whole universe; and then, as if they were made of mist or smoke, they simply drifted away, becoming part of the earth and the dew and the night breeze.

- Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (emphasis mine)

What I wouldn't give to embrace the whole universe. If that only happens when you die, then that is my version of heaven. I just want to feel everything!