In or Out of It
Don’t you hate it when you feel tossed around by waves in the ocean? Like you have no anchor to ground yourself or rock that you can cling to? It feels a bit unsafe and unnerving. That is how I felt when I wrote “In or Out.” I just got out of a relationship and tried to make sense of what happened, as I’m sure you can relate.
Prior to writing this song, I was in two relationships that went something like this: I thought the guy was into me; I would text, he would text back…occasionally; I would wonder what is going on and if I had done something; I would push harder, he would push away; I would push away, he would come back stronger, etc. Those relationships felt toxic and unsafe with no steady ground to stand on. In essence, they weren’t really relationships but rather two people who wanted opposite things—one wanted a relationship and the other one did not want commitment. After exiting the second relationship (and it ended badly), I had to re-evaluate what my role was and what their role was in the relationship. Did they really want out of this or was this their way to get attention? Would they come back after some silence and would we end up back at square one?
The image in my head that has always played with this song is a lover singing sweetly to the other, “just take your time but are you in this or out of it?” I feel like that is how it often starts in a relationship; you are trying to figure out where each other stands and what you want out of the relationship. Ultimately, do you want to be in this with me, or not? As time goes on and the other party is not giving you the clarity that you need to either stay or go, feelings start to intensify, emotions start to boil over until there is more of an explosive charge. It’s often so hard to contain frustration when the other party is not giving you the information that you need. So while the song starts softly, somewhere midpoint, it starts to intensify until you hit the breaking point of, “stop messin' around, and tell me what's going on in your mind.” And that is exactly how I felt in each of these situations. It was like squeezing blood from a turnip, as they say. I couldn’t get an exact answer until emotions became explosive or frustration hit the breaking point.
My favorite part of the song by far is the chorus because this tells the entirety of these situations in just four lines:
‘Cause you pull me back up
You pull me back in
You mess me around
And you do it again
How often do we get sucked back into toxic situations like a riptide pulling us right back into that unsavory current, the one that is trying to drown you?
And this is where the maturity of self-evaluation comes in: What is my part in it? After sitting down with a few lines of this song and trying to finish the story of these two lovers, I realized that often my part in it was that I’ve refused to get myself out of it. Just like the person who sees the lifeboat but would prefer to get swept up in the waves because they think it will ultimately serve them more, it never does.
You have to realize that you do have the power to pull yourself out and that you have the want and desire to as well. Acknowledging that you have the power to make decisions and don’t have to wait around for someone else to tell you whether they want you or not is one of the most empowering moves you can make for yourself. It’s an act of self-love. So perhaps, while the chorus is one of my favorite parts, the last line, “Cause I’m out of it,” is truly my favorite because therein lies the self-love to exit a toxic situation, which ultimately not only serves you but the other person in it with you. Yes, you have that power to release yourself!