This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
When I was a little girl the world was small to me
All the light in my life filtered softly through the trees
The shadows in the photographs
Five ghosts who followed me
I was only truly frightened once
They called my name and said they wanted me
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
When I grew in age and fame and traveled through the world
All the rives of the city like flags of blue unfurled
Me pressed against the railing
Me taken to a room
Me breaking in the morning
Dark with a sense of coming doom
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
Now I have grown old and all my grace and beauty gone
Five ghosts surround my garden, I don't tell them to move on
I walk deeper into shade now
That dappled light again
I see you standing at the gate
My one and only friend
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
All the light in my life filtered softly through the trees
The shadows in the photographs
Five ghosts who followed me
I was only truly frightened once
They called my name and said they wanted me
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
When I grew in age and fame and traveled through the world
All the rives of the city like flags of blue unfurled
Me pressed against the railing
Me taken to a room
Me breaking in the morning
Dark with a sense of coming doom
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
Now I have grown old and all my grace and beauty gone
Five ghosts surround my garden, I don't tell them to move on
I walk deeper into shade now
That dappled light again
I see you standing at the gate
My one and only friend
Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die
Oh, for one sweet second without the eye
Lyrics submitted by katalius123
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When I listen to this song, I hear a story about a small-town girl who grew up in the provinces. Since childhood, she either had premonitions of her destiny or literally saw five ghosts, and these visions have hounded her all her life. "Oh, what a beautiful day to try to die / Oh, for one sweet second without the eye" to me refers to her lifelong quest to thwart her own destiny and make a name for herself. It could also refer to a desire to not see these visions and to live normally.
In the second verse, I imagine that she's succeeded to some extent and is now a celebrity of some sort. All the opportunity open to her ("All the rivers of the city like flags of blue unfurled") must give her quite a thrill. Perhaps she lives a bit recklessly just to prove that the visions are wrong, and she can "try to die" on her own terms.
However, she is in an abusive relationship, making her living as a high-class escort, or the subject of one night's brutal attack. The vulnerability she feels the morning after brings back her childhood memories of the five ghosts, and perhaps she wonders if she will truly succeed in escaping her destiny.
For the last verse, I imagine that she has retired to her home province and, with her money, built a large estate on her childhood stomping grounds. From her balcony one late afternoon, she looks out and sees the visions again. By this time, however, she has accepted her destiny ("I don't tell them to move on"). As the sun sets, she goes for a walk under the trees she must have played in during her youth. Her "one and only friend" could literally be someone who has stood by her all these years or a personification of the destiny she's tried so hard to avoid--maybe even death itself, the death that has waited patiently for her all her life.