Neely O'Hara

i think this song is about someone with depression and anxiety, more specifically with depersonalization disorder. at least, that's what it reminds me of. "So you think that things sound different At the time when you speak Well, there are visions much clearer than these blurs that you see" & "You don't recognize the behavior Or the spelling of your name and the shape that is in the mirror Well, you'd swear it is not the same"

those are the same feelings i have when my depersonalization acts up.

I think this song is just about someone who was an amazing person in the beginning, probably someone very close to Conor, who he basically had to watch ruin their life slowly. It's happened to me countless times. It's one of the most painful experiences in the world to watch a friend slowly fall apart and know there's nothing you can do about it, and I think that's what this song is about.

Also- Neely O'Hara is a substance abusing character from the Valley Of the Dolls, that's how she fits in. To my knowledge this song is not about bullemia, and the throwing up water I think it's probably not supposed to literally mean throwing up so much as just every day "throwing up" more and more of yourself, perhaps your soul. And Neely who he thanks and has brought on stage is a friend named Neely Jenkins but I do not think she is in any way related to this song.

I love it when Conor screams \"No you are not!\" at the end of the song, because he sounds like he\'s arguing, with someone or himself, over whether or not they are the same person that they used to be. It really drives home the messages of losing someone (or yourself) as they fade away.

this song's clearly relative to the character in valley of the dolls, otherwise the names wouldn't be identical. but ultimately it's about an eating disorder. the reference to throwing up could be a variety of things, but generally after a person has been inducing vomiting for a while they're skin turns the yellow color conor describes. "do you think that someone paints your mirror?" inforces the distorted view of an eating disordered person, and "the blurs that you see" are an effect of malnutrition. the sudden discovery of not being who you used to be is what typically happens when someone is so caught up in maintaining their illness that they don't seem to notice their gradual weight loss, and they feel as if it happened overnight. that might be why conor adds the bit about swallowing sleep. the unrecognizable behavior is the odd ways eating disordered people live, the way they divide their food, the way they chew every piece of food in no more or less of a certain amount of bites (of course, each behavior is specific to the individual). the first time i heard this song i understood the swallowing of sleep as not sleeping at all, as if to say that it is all you swallow. when people are malnourished they become shockingly manic and tend to get very little sleep. just my input.

Im bulimic, i also starve until my rib cage starts to show, and my collar bones pop out. Anyways, this song makes me cry so much. It makes me feel that some people actualy care.This song is just so conforting. I hope someone paints my mirror. Yet then again if i die from something either starving or puking..then maybe my family will actualy care. And then sometimes, when i hear songs like this, it makes me feel like the people who sing these songs care, and thats all we need, is for someone to care, and someone to love us.

Neely O'Hara is a character in the book Valley Of Dolls. I don't know what this has to do with the meaning of the song, but she is.

Make that Valley of the Dolls. Sorry.

they played this song live in boston. it was excellent. i never had a real appreciation for it until i saw it live..but its wonderful.

Conor thanks Neely on some of his cds...so I wonder if it is a real person.

neely jenkins is a real person. his friend. that's who he thanks.