CARBON COPY

"For the person who inherited their parent's anxiety and is trying to return it" Lyrics - [VERSE 1] My mother checks the stove four times before she leaves the kitchen, I check my phone four times before I leave the bed, She learned it from her mother who survived on constant vigilance — Three generations of women rehearsing what to dread. I caught myself arranging exits in a restaurant last Thursday, Mapping the quickest route between my chair and open air, And I realised with a sadness that was older than my body That I'd inherited a reflex from a woman who was never there. [PRE-CHORUS] She gave me her eyes and her cheekbones and her laughter — But she also gave me the alarm That rings inside my ribcage When absolutely nothing is wrong. [CHORUS] Carbon copy — I am photocopied panic in a newer frame, Carbon copy — her worry in my bloodstream wearing my name, Carbon copy — I love her but I'm sending back the trembling, Carbon copy — I refuse to pass this frequency to anyone I'm raising. [VERSE 2] She taught me how to love by teaching me to catastrophise the losing, To hold every person like a glass about to crack, She meant well — every anxious mother means well — But meaning well and teaching well don't always share a track. I found a journal in her drawer from nineteen eighty-seven — She wrote "I hope my daughter doesn't carry this" in pencil, barely legible, And I sat on her bedroom floor and cried for forty minutes Because she prayed against the very thing she gave me — and the irony was terrible. [CHORUS] Carbon copy — I am photocopied panic in a newer frame, Carbon copy — her worry in my bloodstream wearing my name, Carbon copy — I love her but I'm sending back the trembling, Carbon copy — I refuse to pass this frequency to anyone I'm raising. [BRIDGE] Mum — I'm not angry. I'm just tired. Tired of scanning rooms for danger. Tired of the rehearsal in my chest For emergencies that never clock in. You survived things I will never know. And survival taught you vigilance. And vigilance taught you me. But I'm rewriting the manual now. Not because you failed — Because you loved me enough To hope I'd have the vocabulary To name what you could only carry. [FINAL CHORUS] Carbon copy — I am learning to distinguish your fear from mine, Carbon copy — the alarm still rings but now I check before I climb, Carbon copy — I love you and I'm keeping every beautiful thing, Carbon copy — but the panic stops with me — I'm breaking the photocopying. [OUTRO] She hoped I wouldn't carry it. I read her prayer in pencil. And I'm answering it — thirty years late. Mum — I'm putting it down.