"Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed."

When my paternal grandmother passed away when I was 16, I turned to songs to find solace and comfort. One of the songs that I came across was The Rose by Bette Midler. This song was released in 1979, way before I was born, yet it is still relevant now.

I never really thought of it till now but seriously, how fucked up are the mindsets of teenagers these days. How is it considered 'normal' for teenagers to feel suicidal or self-harm? How is it normal for teenagers to bully one another due to a lack of emotional comfort? How is this society still functioning as one?

Reading the lyrics when I was 16 years old and reading the lyrics now that I'm 20 has left me reeling with different emotions. I'm trying not to go on a rant about the deeper meanings behind the lyrics but one particular line stood out to me so I'm just going to point it out.

"Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed."

Bearing in mind that this song was written in 1979, I was just so astonished how this single sentence of lyrics just summarised self-harm as one beautiful quote. When I'm not busy being overwhelmed by my emotions, I like to think about the triggers for my emo-induced episodes and figure them out so that those episodes don't happen again. And as I was travelling down that road of thought, a realisation suddenly struck me.

If you think about it in a fucked up sort of way, those people who engage in self harming activities are actually doing it because they either:

1. Don't feel loved
2. Don't feel like they deserve to be loved

So if you follow my train of thoughts, aren't those people harming themselves because of love? Now, back to the line of lyrics in Bette Midler's song, The Rose.

"Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed."

I've always wondered why she chose to use the word 'razor' in this sentence. Surely there are many other words that could be used in replacement. Even if it's about the number of syllables in the word itself, I'm pretty sure there are many other words that have two syllables and are potentially damaging to the soul and can leave it to bleed.

Yet, she used the word 'razor'.

And as I was scrolling through the cutting tag on tumblr, I finally understood why.

"Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed."