I was with friends. We'd just seen my horses and enjoying a drink in the local pub. My mother phoned, unusual for that time of day, there must be something wrong. There was! Glynn, mum's brother, died suddenly that morning, she was distraught. I immediately made my apologies to my friends, who were as shocked as me but offered their love and support. I made my way home where I could have a 'proper' phone conversation with mum.
Now, we all deal with these situations in our own way, we all have our 'coping mechanisms'. Mine has always been since I can remember, to sit at the piano and 'let it all out', to allow my autistic brain to process emotion through creating music. It settles thoughts into their compartments, I can express how I feel, not verbally because I don't understand emotion enough to connect it to words, but communicating to myself through the conduit of the piano. I immediately went to the studio after talking with mum. This piece of music is the result.
The words came once I'd formulated my thoughts and the phrase 'deal with it' blasted its way to the front. I've experienced trauma and loss before at an early, life defining age and lived through its consequences. This, combined with an innate psychological framework that was given diagnostic labels in my thirties, has lead to a life which has been full of erratic behaviour, addiction, mental health issues, frustration and anger but this time I'm not relying on ingrained patterns of behaviour or chemical crutches. I'm a different person now, helped by the love and resilience from Sarah, I no longer rely on anything but myself. Life will always have its testing moments, like I say in the song, 'I might feel the pain, I may suffer the loss, I will get up off my ass, I'm going to win the toss!'
If anybody needs to take away anything from this song, it's the realisation that we all have this 'inner strength' somewhere. You may not know it, you may not know where it is, you may think that everything's hopeless, but its there! You may need help to access it but you have it!
Believe in yourself! You're stronger than you think! You can 'Deal with It!'
Once again, I thank Emily Dolan Davies for the drum stems! There's usually a connection with Emily's playing, this is no exception.