Shane Koyczan - 2nd Time Around lyrics

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder
But, if beauty is a woman
Then maybe no one ever told
Her that if that’s true
I’ve heard beautiful people say
"I hate it when people stare at me"
And I, being ugly, have muttered
"yeah, me too" and you will not be this
I’ve taken all my last chances
Divided by my near misses
And found that this is my second time around
And I’ve got my ears pressed
So close to the ground
I can hear the sound of my mother telling me:
"You will not be this!"

From kindergarten to grade eight
I was teased and beaten so bad
I came home crying every day
Until my mother’s eyes developed a voice
And I saw them say "You’ve got a choice


You can choose to run from these fights
Until your life gets narrowed down
To either hit or miss
Or you can do whatever you have to do
In order to make them love you because
You will not be this"

So from a father with Scoliosis
To a mother with multiple sclerosis
I ended up with a diagnosis
Somewhere in the middle
With a diagnosis handed down to me
By my class so called "mates"
Sentenced my to a life alone
With their first impressions
All of those court room sessions going
On in the back of mind
Trying to find some way to prove me guilty
And I was, ugly

But, I made them love me
See, on my first time around I played Icarus
Got so close to the Sun that I fell
Sat with lovers who wound up in hell
But this is my second time around
And the next time I climb to
The top of that summit
I'm gonna get so close to the Sun
I can roast marshmallows from it
Because I don't care how you've suffered
You ever been reeled in, reamed
Out, picked on, put down
Based on what you look like?
I won't lie to you
I won’t say everything's gonna to be okay
I won't pretend
But, I will put my arm around you and say
"Don't worry friend" i'm calling you friend
Because as for what is beautiful
And what is not, i am the backdrop
I am the stop sign on the line you crossed
When you asked:
"Why do you want our respect so bad?!"
Because you told me I can't have it!
And I’ll be goddamned if I don't get it
Every expectation you placed on me
I've met it and I refuse to edit my life
So as what is beautiful and what is not
I've got your answer
I am your basis for all comparison
I am the garrison that holds up
The terrible weight of beauty
But, I'm not a soldier
So does not my duty to
Apologize for how I look

It took me two times around
But I found that I am one of a kind
And those people out there get a
Buy novel selection as good
And they're not too broke
To change their mind
And I am sure if they checked
They might find enough loose beauty
Jingling around their pockets
To go buy some self-respect
And I don't just preach this, i teach this
I don’t just give this, i live this!

Because stubbornness is like the
Color of my eyes
And I've heard enough lies to know the truth
That in my youth
Stubbornness is something my mother gave me!
So, I've made it my friend
I started to blend knowledge with wisdom
My mother taught me to take the
Bruce Lee approach to learning:
Learning as self defense
And I've learned a thing or two
About a thing or two
And yeah, it's true, maybe I
Don't take off my shirt
When I'm sleeping beside you
But when I was six years old
They peeled me off the street
And the skin on my back stuck
To the hospital stretcher sheet
Like thinly sliced deli meat
An accident turned me into a work of art
With a doctor like a museum curator
Reading my chart to a bunch
Of interns who whisper
They've seen third-degree burns better than
The ones on my back

But life's a gamble
So, I learned to stack the odds of my favor
I learned to savor the hand I was dealt
And yeah
Sometimes I felt like life is really
Just more trouble than it's worth
Even my birth was a tragedy that ensured
My mother would never have another baby
And maybe if you didn't tell that
Doctor to cut into your womb
It would’ve become my tomb
That was my first time around
And since then
I found my life is neither hit nor miss
And I still cries sometimes
But don't worry, i will not be this