because I love the way you lie

...But you'll always be my hero

Even though you've lost your mind

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn

well that's alright because I like the way it hurts

just gonna stand there and hear me cry

well that's alright because I love the way you lie.

I love the way you lie.

I love the way you lie.

I've been listening to Skylar Grey's version of "Love the Way You Lie" over and over again. [You should grooveshark it--I couldn't find it on amazon or itunes.] It makes me sick, but I love it. Which, like, is totally the point of the song; I'm really getting the full experience. The original song is too harsh for me. There's a line where Eminem is something like, "and if she leaves again I'm going to tie her to the bed and set fire to the house." And he always sounds so angry anyway. So, it's a song about domestic abuse, shattered glass from fights, and how, "you always win, even when I'm right." He lies to her with "fables from his head." She sings that "it's sick that all these battles are what keeps me satisfied." (btw should it be "keep" instead of "keeps"? I can't decide if the verb refers to "all" or "the battles.")

We always love people who hurt us. Sometimes that makes us love them more. Maybe we feel brave and magnanimous for giving back love in the face of the pain they cause. I feel like there is no depth or height that we wouldn't go to, to excuse someone we want to excuse. At the beginning of the song, it goes, "Even angels have their wicked schemes, and you take that to new extremes," which is definitely comparing the abuser/liar to an angel, even if unfavorably.

This goes back to my idea that we decide in advance how we want to feel about someone, and view all of their actions in light of that, instead of evaluating each one independently (I think this is called the inductive approach, although it might really be the deductive). This ability allows us to continue to trust in God's character even when it seems like He doesn't care about us or has forgotten. It also allows us to forgive people that we don't understand (PTL) if we listen to their side of the story and hear in their own words why they did what they did. There are so many people I don't understand, but if I can just believe them that they meant well, we can get along, even if I was hurt before I knew their intent. Whether we should spend all our time with people we have to struggle to get at all is another issue, but at least we don't have to avoid them entirely if we're willing to listen.

"But you'll always be my hero/ Even though you've lost your mind" is so chilling to me. I don't feel this way about anyone, but I can so easily imagine it. I can picture wanting so badly to see someone a certain way (as a hero) that you overlook terrible, inappropriate, ill-thought-out behavior. This kind of thing is why someone felt like they had to author He's Just Not That Into You. Sometimes you would do better to look at a person's actual actions and use those to decide the kind of person they are, rather than listening to their self-assessment, which is, to say the least, biased. This can be especially true with a person you don't talk to regularly. That not-talking-ness might be a sign right there that they don't really care for you (not always, but maybe).

People are always telling you who they are, whether they mean to or not. You owe it to them, and to yourself, to listen.