©Lydia Lord
I did what I knew how to do
It wasn't always healthy
But it got me through
When I was a kid I was always scared
But you know that could never be shared
Bein' a clown is what got me by
Make 'em laugh, they can't make you cry
My sister was smarter, no denyin'
So why compete? I just quit tryin'
Eventually I understood
I could do a lot more than I thought I could
A lot of the grief my life supplied
Was grief I had to keep inside
Feelings found a hiding place
I stuffed my pain by feedin' my face
I did what I knew how to do
It didn't fix the problem
But it got me through
At 18 I was a lonely guy
And so depressed I wanted to die
A summer in the forest helped me see
There was still a place on the planet for me
Had a close encounter with dynamite
I tried and tried, but it wouldn't’t light
Survived by luck, not usin' my head
'Cause more than once I shoulda been dead
My shyness was a stumbling block
Till a speech class helped me learn to talk
And then I noticed something weird
The more I said, the less I feared
I did what seemed like the right thing then
And when it worked out
I did it again
And now I'm a widow on my own
It gets pretty boring, living alone
So I just have a glass of wine
And tell the world I'm doing fine
Life's handed me some painful stuff
I’I've made it through by gettin' tough
I act like the pain is no big deal
And nobody knows how I really feel
83 years I've been alive
Don’t really know how I survived
It was hard along the way
But I just kept goin’ day by day
Some of the ways I tried to cope
Didn't turn out the way I hoped
But I've done the best that I could do
And right or wrong, it got me through
