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It's alright
There comes a time
Got no patience to search for peace of mind
Layin' low
Want to take it slow
No more hiding or disguising truths I've sold
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
It's okay
Had a bad day
Hands are bruised from breaking rocks all day
Drained and blue
I bleed for you
You think it's funny, well you're drowning in it too
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
Yeah, it's fine
We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine
You my friend
I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
There comes a time
Got no patience to search for peace of mind
Layin' low
Want to take it slow
No more hiding or disguising truths I've sold
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
It's okay
Had a bad day
Hands are bruised from breaking rocks all day
Drained and blue
I bleed for you
You think it's funny, well you're drowning in it too
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
Yeah, it's fine
We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine
You my friend
I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway
Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know
Lyrics submitted by Ice
Track duration: 04:16
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"It's alright
There comes a time
Got no patience to search for peace of mind"
When I was younger it was easier to fit everything I knew into a puzzle on how the world works and where I fit in. It's easier to have "piece of mind" when you aren't as worried about your life and it just seems there's a whole world ahead of you without limits. You never lose the desire to have this feeling but once you get into the grind, no matter what you're doing, you're so wrapped up in a whole new set of problems that it's very easy to slip away from that feeling... but you never forget about it.
"Layin' low
Want to take it slow
No more hiding or disguising truths I've sold"
Slipping into this time period of my life, I want to keep trying to recreate the good times and go out and have fun. Problem is, as you keep trying you realize each time it's barely ever that way. Friends who are going through the same thing are still trying to live that way and you get to a point where you're tired of trying to force it. It hurts your relationships but it hurts more to be let down by it, so you get blunt and just tell the truth that you're going to do nothing.
"Everyday it's something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know"
As the theme of the song, no matter what path you take you're being let down nearly every time. You're avoiding the things you once loved realizing it's just not there, which is a cold feeling. It's not that there's something else going on that's better but it's better to expect nothing than to be let down again.
"It's okay
Had a bad day
Hands are bruised from breaking rocks all day"
To me it just enforces the fact that this song is about going into a later period of your life. You're now working your ass off, it's not glorious but you know you have to go through it.
"Drained and blue
I bleed for you"
If Jerry wrote this about Layne, maybe it's direct in the fact that he was working hard to keep the band going. For me at this point, right now I'm working just to keep afloat and to be able to see my friends when there actually is a good opportunity.
"You think it's funny, well you're drowning in it too"
My friends and I always joke and say "living the dream". We joke about it with a large sense of seriousness. I don't take this as a jab at anyone or people in general, just a sad way of everyone of realizing what's coming to be. Of course, it could also be directed at someone who isn't really realizing it.
"Yeah, it's fine
We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine"
I take this as the reason you're putting up with this all to begin with. You're walking down the line, in the hopes of one day getting to the point that was once there, and being able to eventually enjoy that again someday.
"You my friend
I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway"
Hands down, in my opinion this is one of the most powerful lyrics ever written. I think it says a lot about Jerry's character. You realize that these kind of times change people drastically and with your good friends you see it happen right in front of you. Only a true friend would still love you and have your back no matter how things end up.
Again, I just don't see any possible way there is a drug reference in this song directly. If Jerry wrote this about Layne, maybe it's because he saw what he was slipping into but not necessarily blaming him for his choices. For some people these times are good, for others it's rough and everyone handles it in their own way.
"Find me sittin' by myself, no excuses, then I know". I know Cantrell wrote it, but that is almost to a tee how Layne left the world.
I hate my job with a passion, and for the most part I hate a lot of my life. I'm not happy with where I live or what I do and I've become incredibly reclusive and introverted and have sunk into a bit of a depression and have lots of problems with anxiety. A lot of people kind of laugh at my feelings and tell me "you and everyone else buddy!" but I take it more seriously and I feel that I am not blind to it like they are. I dream that I might one day pull out of this and make something better for myself. To get a more indepth interpretation, read on.
In the first verse, it goes "Its alright, there comes a time, got no patience to search for peace of mind". To me and in my situation, it represents my increasingly antisocial attitude and how I find it difficult to find the better qualities in people. I've becoming more and more cynical.
Then: "Laying low, want to take it slow, no more hiding or disguising truths I've sold". Recently I've been hiding and keeping to myself, not really talking to people or interacting unless I have to. But I've been gradually been being more frank with people when I do interact with them, no more sugar coating things or telling them what they want to hear. I'm blatantly obvious with them even if it is rude or something.
The chorus: "Everyday something hits me all so cold, find me sitting by myself, no excuses that I know" It seems to me that every day its just blow after blow by people who don't care about me and it has driven me into my own little private world. To me excuses there are no excuses other than the fact that life is cruel and there is no escaping it.
"Its ok, had a bad day, hands are bruised from breaking rocks all day." "Drained and blue, I bleed for you, you think its funny but you're drowning in it too." I work hard day in and day out to earn my keep and I don't like it, I despise it and I am miserable doing it. Enough so that I'm emotionally and spiritually drained and becoming depressed. When I try to talk to anyone about it I get no sympathy, its almost a joke to people because supposedly everyone is like me. But I feel like I'm more in touch with my inner being than most people are with themselves and am able to understand how I feel and the severity of it better than others. There is a George Carlin joke that represents this well: "You hate your job? There's a support group for that, its called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." I don't think its funny.
The final verse: "You my friend, I will defend, and if we change well I love you any way." To me this is kind of like my wife speaking to me, I feel like she is the only person who really understands how I feel and what I'm going through. And if I decide to make a major life change she will be there to support me 100%.
So that is pretty much the meaning of the song to me. The beauty about most music and especially Alice in Chains songs is that you can interpret them any way. Just because the lyrics say one thing doesn't mean they don't mean something else.
This reply is addressing the personal side of your comment as opposed to the song. And I realize it's over a year and a half old, but I felt the need to reply to it and I can only hope you don't mind. For what it's worth, I understand exactly how you feel. The frustration. If fact, I probably couldn't have worded it any better. I believe we are what is referred to as "Sensitive" people (something I consider a good quality, while the general public consider it a weakness). I take that to mean that we have easy access to our feelings. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. Sensitive people who live in the world of reality. We are, or at least were, compassionate and empathetic towards people but that is disappearing at a rapid rate. When you try to discuss this with others, they either respond to you as if you were discussing something as meaningless as having a splinter in your finger OR they claim they have the same feelings, as if we are talking about something measureable, like arthritis. The more we tell them they don't quite have the picture, the more they say "Oh sure we do. It happens to everybody". Well no, in fact it doesn't. There is a place inside all of us which is a very dark and lonely place and they haven't see it because if they had, they would know it and understand what your talking about and wouldn't make light of your feelings. We get to the point that we just want to retire from the world of the living. We don't want to die but we don't want to join in with the living either. I think everyone has an illusion of what their lives are supposed to be and an even bigger illusion about most of the people in their lives. And when we think things are going as they should, life shows her sense of humor and throws one thing after another at the unsuspecting. My husband passed away unexpectedly 12 years ago. I completely fell apart, but I knew I had people in my corner who would watch my back and walk me through this unbelievably brutal time in my life. When I turned around, nobody was there. I truly thought they loved and cared about me. My friends. They didn't or they would have been there, as I was for them countless times. I never expected anything in return from them but I didn't expect to be abandoned either. These aren't the people I knew. Are they? Well as it turned out, they aren't the people I knew them to be. A lot of things weren't. People only show us what they want us to see of them and we only see what we choose to see. That applies to pretty much everything in life. I tell you this story because that was my moment of clarity. That moment of clarity can be set off by any number of events, big or small. It's the realization that in reality, your life wasn't the same as you perceived it to be. One thing becomes crystal clear and then another and another. And It can be really tough, even overwhelming to suddenly see things as they really are. It seems a crisis or tragedy can snap you back to reality really quick and you best be holding on tight because that ride, with perfect vision, is going to be a really rough one. And it remains painful because you have become disillusioned. And that's a very difficult state, if not an impossible one, in which to live in for any length of time.
I hope this makes sense to you. Just know there are people out there who really do understand how you feel. We may all have taken a different path to get there but we arrived at the same spot you found yourself in.
I hope you are feeling better and I wish you the best .
Oh, I don't like that George Carlin joke either.
"You my friend
I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway".... One of my favorite lines ever written- beautiful stuff.