Project: Unstable balance

03 — SOUTH OF PARADISE

Inside the drawers, my old ideas still survive,

Lost though they are, at least I know they're mine;
Beyond the insults and the jealous spite,
All that remains in the end is a sea of lies.
Since you left me, you live hanging in a limbo out of time,
South of Paradise is where I live now — and this life is mine.
What was I thinking, I wonder, what did I mean to do?
What was I looking for, seeing, every time I waited on you?
Talking of building a future was never getting through,
And even the thought of us trying was out of the question too.
I feel lost, I've lost it all, but somehow I'm alive,
I came crashing down in a heartbeat, South of Paradise...
...South of Paradise...
...South of Paradise.
Out in the storm, caught in the middle of the tide,
I found myself still following the wake you left behind;
Through compromises, all your pointless fixations,
With no more lighthouse there to point me new directions.
You live inside a gilded cage, adored as if divine,
South of Paradise is where I live now — and this life is mine.
What was I thinking, I wonder, what did I mean to do?
What was I looking for, seeing, every time I waited on you?
Talking of building a future was never getting through,
And even the thought of us trying was out of the question too.
What was I thinking, I wonder, what did I mean to do?
What was I looking for, seeing, every time I waited on you?
Talking of building a future was never getting through,
And even the thought of us trying was out of the question too.
I feel lost, I've lost it all, but somehow I'm alive,
I came crashing down in a heartbeat, South of Paradise...
...South of Paradise...
...South of Paradise...
...South of Paradise.
I don't know which bed you're sleeping in now,
I only know it isn't mine.
And South of Paradise, instead,
Is where I'm living my life.
South of Paradise is where I live!

Some losses arrive like a sentence and, with time, reveal themselves as a form of release.

At first, you don't realise it. You look back at what you have left behind and take inventory of the damage: plans that came to nothing, promises that were never kept, the future you imagined and that will never exist.

You feel as though you have fallen far from everything you wanted, into a place you never chose and no one would willingly call home.

Then you begin to look more closely.

You discover that your ideas are still there in your drawers. Perhaps they never changed the world; perhaps they made you neither richer nor happier, but they are still yours. You discover that you have lost a great deal, but not the most important part of yourself. And you discover that some lives, seen from a distance, resemble paradise only because you cannot see the bars.

South of Paradise is about the moment when you stop mourning what you have lost and begin to recognise what you have managed to keep. It is the story of a fall that does not destroy, but reveals. Of a defeat that leaves its scars, but gives freedom back.

Because there are places humbler than paradise, less dazzling and less celebrated, where you can still draw a full breath.

And sometimes, that is exactly where it is worth staying.