The song is about choosing to let someone go- probably for one’s own safety, sanity, responsibility, or fulfillment- but still caring extensively about them and longing for them to at least make safer decisions. (See lines about them having their dreams cared about and being held while shaking….) It is about the fallout of that moment of “I will always desperately want someone to make sure that you are okay, but it can only be effective if you participate anyway, and I can’t keep helping someone who [moment after mind-wiring moment] won’t ever show up to care about their self.. even if people who don’t love their selves /did/ recognize and appreciate others caring for them enough…. which.. you of course tend to not…”

I hear the theory that this line means “It’s too late for us, now; I’ve lost faith in you, even though i still so badly want you to be and do well,” but i always hear the line as one of the many about the writer wishing wisdom on their psychologically sickly beloved, and possibly literally talking them through how to get through the night safely before needing to take off for their own good night’s sleep, [as a mortal being]. .. People rarely have folk taking shifts looking after them through the night, and I think the lyricist is desperately haunted by concern for what will happen if their emotionally expensive loved one stays out after everyone who would have loved to watch out for them has finally needed to do the healthy thing and hit the hay, as they say. .. Cellphones weren’t a (at least civilian) thing in 1983-4, and someone as needy as the person the song is written about would likely seek help in the night so much that their friends & maybe even family would have one by one learned to set their overall or personalized notifications to something out-sleepable. .. Someone so messy can’t necessarily be trusted to discern which battles to ask people to pick about helping them through what was probably night after night at the bar.

.. or… maybe the situation was specific to a particular evening, somehow, but… these things usually aren’t, so… if so then the song probably continued to resonate, maybe even haunting after a tragic death. .. I’m sorry to be so hypothetically grim, but the song is about worrying for someone’s safety for very good reasons.

.. I wish there were more songs like this: actually there for people who are worrying about someone other than their self when doing so becomes unbearable and unavoidable for all of the same reasons. … It’s some serious Al Anon shit. :,( After all, they reference having held the person while they were shaking, which happens to people who are very addicted to alcohol, and to other horrible substances as well. This song is so crucially amazing partly because of how specific yet nearly ubiquitous the subjectmatter is. … Who hasn’t loved someone with some sort of dangerous effing habit?….- probably even if you were raised very shelteredly & somehow managed to miss or misinterpret all of the signs since then. .. So, anyone with some life experience under their belt who doesn’t worry about these people is likely to have either their eyes or their heart clamped shut- whether in psychological self defense or in negligence.. As the song points out, even those who have needed to leave may still care excruciatingly. .. Thank God for this beautiful song. .. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it offers connection to the people who wish that they could. .. And it does so whether or not we have more mutually reliable connections in which to wrap up our attention so that we don’t grow too fatally discouraged.

I don’t know how to comment on the song as a whole, but… I wanted to at least balance out the hypotheses about this first line that are alright personal sentiments to read into the song if it makes the beautifully heartfelt jam more cathartic for particular people but are also probably signs of missing the incredibly worthy & under-sung points stashed in the lines of this song as well as in between them.

<3 Love to all.