If I'd Found The Right Words To Say

ugh i hate (love) when songs relate to me sooo much. i just moved away to school, and the boy i was dating broke up with me due to "distances"... i keeep thinking there was something i could have said to him to make him stay and try for just a little while longer... something so that i could wake up with him by my side again. "and i'd like to change all this and i'd like to wake up from this by your side"

oh welllllllll.

It only makes sense that this song is about maybe his really good friend,lover, someone special that is sick and is about to die of something fatal. You can this throughout the whole song. "I will follow your ghost as it climbs up the rock-face and lie with you on the grass above." What if the grass above means lying above her grave. "maybe there's a hope in just one final second a flash of her love as she waves us goodbye don't torture yourself with what we might have given we did everything that we could ever do" - By this time in the song she's died and they cant help but remember her... and there not going to toture themselves by thinking of all the things they COULDNT do to help her. He just wants to wake from all of this and look beside himself and see her again.... That what I think it means.

I was thinking about the rockface verse... and its possible that rockface means simply her tomb stone.

depression? there's an interview with gary lightbody [vocals] in the april issue of Q magazine, and he talks about sadness and that, so i think maybe he has a lover, or a person really close to him that has depression, but he cares about her so much he's gonna be there for her for the rest of their lives. but she has turned into a "ghost" of her former self, and she's only happy for a little while, but to him that's worth everything...

I feel like the guy in the song "failed" to save his girlfriend from suicide. The first verse is the bargaining stage of grief. He's begging to turn back the clock and stop her. He's hating himself because he feels that if he'd only "found the right words to say," she might still be alive.

The second verse is denial. He can't get over the shock. He'd probably planned out a whole future with her in his head and now she's gone. The "rockface" is likely a cliff that she jumped from. He wants to go there and feel her "ghost," pretend she's still with him.

"And I'd like to change all this, and I'd like to wake up from this by your side." Bargaining, depression, denial, all wrapped up in one desperate, pleading sentence.

The third verse is him wondering how he didn't see it before. He's probably noticing the signs in retrospect. Or, maybe he did have suspicions that she might try to hurt herself, but her brief moments of happiness overshadowed his worries. Either way, he's blaming himself again.

In the final verse, he's remembering the last time he saw her. Trying to make sense of the "flash of her love as she waves goodbye." And then someone (most likely family or a friend) is telling him that there was nothing he could have done. It's not his fault.

But in the end he can't let go.

Damn I'm emo. I blame Snow Patrol.

The lyrics and vocal tone are much stronger and bleaker than a breakup... I think it's about the death of a loved one, possibly a suicide. Despite the present tense, it overwhelmingly seems like the subject is dead (or is very depressed, dead inside?)

"Maybe there's hope in just one final second A flash of her love as she waves us goodbye Don't torture yourself with what we might have given We did everything that we could ever do"

seems very characteristic of the mourning people do when someone has committed suicide-- looking back, did she love us, did she hate us when she did it? Is there anything I could have done? What could I have said to prevent this?

Either way- a heartbreaking and very honest song.

this reminds me of a situation where it's cold and something bads about to happen and then it's as bad as you anticipated. or walking somewhere and not knowing where you're going, just being lost and not caring.

theyve just broken up and he didnt want want to, but he couldnt find the right words at the time to change her mind.

Maybe the girl has to leave him, like to move or something?

rennamix has got it spot on i think maybe she died by falling off a rockface though