1985, I was 15 when I first heard this song, loved it.
This track made sense to me in all sorts of ways, but primarily? The silent longing, the outward longing….The longing and there’s me, a love- tortured 15 year old, listening to her tape recorder in her bedroom, making sense of how the world isn’t the fairytale that I had read in all those books growing up.
Skip 30 years later, the song still resonates for much more grown up reasons, knowing what I know about toxic dynamics and the unrelentless pain and loneliness they can cause.
And for me? This still beautiful song echos the love the empath has for the Narcissist, how the empath tries but just cannot reach the person they see & feel beyond the veneer.
It also shows the hopelessness of the endeavour, that even though it may feel like a fairytale, there’s no fairytale ending, just the painful reality of roles that cannot be transcended.
No matter what we see, what we feel, if the other person does not want to be reached, does not want to meet us halfway, our unrequited love can only serve to hurt us.
The great gift of being an empath? We are able to love anyone or anything, so as such, learning ways to be selective is really important, and knowing we don’t have to settle for something that hurts us.
So to anyone suffering in a toxic relationship, please have a listen and a read of the lyrics.
You can be loved and you are loveable - don’t settle for less.
The Queen and the Soldier.
Suzanne Vega
The soldier came knocking upon the Queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more"
The Queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside
He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why"
Down in the long narrow hall he was led
Into her rooms with her tapestries red
And she never once took the crown from her head
She asked him there to sit down
He said, "I see you now, and you are so very young
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won
And I've got this intuition, says it's all for your fun
And now will you tell me why?"
The young queen, she fixed him with an arrogant eye
She said, "You won't understand, and you may as well not try"
But her face was a child's, and he thought she would cry
But she closed herself up like a fan
And she said, "I've swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside, and often I've bled"
He laid his hand then on top of her head
And he bowed her down to the ground
"Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel
As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed
But I won't march again on your battlefield"
And he took her to the window to see.
And the sun, it was gold, though the sky, it was gray
And she wanted more than she ever could say
But she knew how it frightened her, and she turned away
And would not look at his face again
And he said, "I want to live as an honest man
To get all I deserve and to give all I can
And to love a young woman who I don't understand
Your highness, your ways are very strange"
But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break
And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached
She took him to the doorstep and she asked him to wait
She would only be a moment inside
Out in the distance her order was heard
And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word
And while the Queen went on strangely in the solitude she preferred
The battle continued on