Still Here (But Not Really) – Song Description
“A shadow wearing skin.” The frightening part of this song, to me, isn’t really the numbness it’s describing, difficult as that numbness clearly is for whoever’s experiencing it. It’s how completely ordinary the day surrounding that numbness still looks from the outside — nobody watching this person go through their normal routine would necessarily have any reason to suspect that anything at all was wrong underneath it. That gap, between how hollowed-out it actually feels on the inside and how entirely unremarkable it appears from the outside, strikes me as the truest and most unsettling thing in the whole song. It was genuinely difficult to write, and I didn’t try to make it easier to sit with by softening any part of it or offering a resolution at the end that the feeling itself doesn’t earn. If it’s difficult to listen to now, I take that as a sign the song is doing its proper job rather than failing at it, however uncomfortable that job turns out to be for the listener.
I walk… but it feels like the floor forgets me.
Like every step I take disappears before it lands.
I’m here—but not really here.
A shadow wearing skin,
A name with no echo,
A house with no lights on.
The world moves like a film I’ve already watched
—except now, I’m not in the cast.
I’m just glass.
People talk and their words pass through me,
not around me… through.
I laugh sometimes.
It’s hollow.
Like tapping on an empty can,
hoping for soup.
But there’s nothing in it—
never was.
I don’t cry much anymore.
Even the tears have packed their bags,
decided I wasn’t worth the water.
My heart?
It used to be an orchestra.
Now it’s just static.
A distant radio playing songs I can’t name
from a place I can’t remember.
And my soul…
my soul is like an abandoned station—
trains used to come and go,
but now the tracks are rusted,
and the ticket windows closed.
I miss feeling.
Not just the good stuff—
I’d take anything.
Pain would be proof.
Grief would be a guest.
But this…
this silence inside me is a fog that forgets
even my own name.
People say, “You’re strong.”
But strength isn’t the same as alive.
A stone is strong.
So is a tombstone.
Sometimes I stare at the ceiling
and wonder if it remembers when I cared.
When I prayed.
When I dreamed.
When I believed mornings meant something.
But I still wake up.
Still eat.
Still breathe.
Still move my mouth when I have to.
I guess that counts.
I guess I’m still here.
But not really.
Lyrics – Michael Forty