RIP Amy Winehouse

I thought I’d break from my Chez Gerard story and pay tribute to the greatness that was Amy Winehouse. 

There is no need to praise her music as it literally speaks for itself. Every lyric, every note, every melody, every song, a testament to how talented she was…

As much as there was an emotion of sadness, the feeling of shock was at a minimum. Still awaiting the results of the autopsy, many have already arrived at the conclusion that drink was partly to blame, but that it was a drugs overdose that killed her. Hmmm… maybe those both did play their part, but I'm sure her broken heart had an even bigger effect in all of it.

Admittedly, I don’t know what it’s like to be addicted to any type of drug (bar flirting with the occasional hangover from hell… never underestimate the power of alcohol.) But I do know what it’s like to be addicted to a person, unhealthy addicted, believing that I was madly in love. And Amy was madly, hopelessly, relentlessly in love with her now ex-husband. No matter how incoherent she was during an interview or performance, she was always able to articulate the phrase ‘I love my Blake.’

I believe she was in love with him, no matter what people say, I think they were both in love and deep in it, deeper than they probably realised. Sometimes two people just aren’t meant to be together and this is when love becomes something dangerous. If you let it, it’ll take over the whole relationship and surround you in a bottomless thick mist. You won’t be able to think or see clearly at all. It turns into this desperate infatuation, where you feel like you can’t even breathe without the other person.

"We loved each other intensely and probably in a really unhealthy co-dependent way” Blake Fielder - Civil

This is when love stops being that and becomes a version of self-harming. To immerse yourself in someone else in never ever a good thing, you’ll start to lose your mind and become a shadow of your former being. This in itself is like a drug. You no longer want, but you feel like you need that person to survive and exist. This is exactly why love can be treacherous.

Dealing with a broken heart is agonizing enough, but when you’ve made that person your absolute everything, it’s excruciating. Every single heartbeat reminds you, every single breath is painful, every thought is about that person, you lose your appetite and the will to want to do anything, you become exhausted but you can’t sleep which makes you even more exhausted… your body soon switches into survival mode, everything just shuts down eventually…

Amy’s mother was quoted as saying “I just think she put her body through too much and it just gave up. If you continue to neglect yourself, there is only so much it can take.”

For me, survival mode is finally being able to sleep, my body is too exhausted to fight anymore and I just sleep for ages and that’s all I want to do. Cry and sleep and cry and sleep and cry myself to sleep. Once I've achieved some rest, I start to eat and slowly (sometimes what feels like too slowly) everything starts to fall back into place. These are desperate, sad times where your body is trying to fix you and you need to let it. Turning to alcohol and or drugs at times like this would make it even harder for your body to cope…. Like Amy’s mother said, there is only so much your body can take…

'There are days when I feel like I know what love is and days where I’m not even sure it exists. But I do know that no one is going to save you, they simply can’t. You have to save yourself first…' Helene  Enahoro

Why do I wish I never played?

Oh what a mess we made

And now the final frame

Love is a losing game

Over futile odds

And laughed at by the Gods

And now the final frame

Love is a losing game  - Amy Winehouse

RIP Amy Winehouse 

1983 – 2011