Three Times the Start - A song to make words flow again
by Anna Joyner @diosanica_
The street seemed endless as my granny tugged on my hand, gently encouraging me to walk. The autumn sunshine was bright in my eyes. Everything was coloured in stunning golds and oranges, but I couldn't care less – I didn't want to go to kindy. I wanted to keep on cuddling her, feeling safe and loved and play the whole day. But Granny was so sweet I didn't want to let her down, so I walked on even if slowly and unwillingly. Staring at my feet, I felt whiny and bored. Lost in this stupor, I was dragging myself through the long, long street when I found myself chanting this little poem:
Hull a fáról a levél,
Nemsokára itt a tél,
Addig az ősz festeget,
Aranyszínű levelet.
In English it translates to something like:
Leaves fall drifting from the trees,
Winter's near upon the breeze.
Till then autumn, brush in hand,
Paints the leaves in gold so grand.
The first ever lines I wrote just happened, and they rhymed too. It was fun and I was a little less bored. I'd lie to you if I told you I knew how the lines came to me. What I know is I liked it, so I kept repeating it, enjoying the feel of it.
My granny went home and wrote it down. The lines became a family staple and my parents were very proud of me, saying I might be onto something, which I frankly didn't understand. From that moment on, however, I recall coming up with lines and also melodies for poems, sketches and songs regularly. It was a very natural thing for me to do until I was fifteen.
No words
Then suddenly life happened. Love, exams and most importantly, in the moment when I would have needed her the most, I lost my granny to Alzheimer's. The words and melodies didn't come anymore, or if they came I didn't want to hear them. Everything was too much, too painful.
Unwritten essays, songs, poems and most importantly my creative passion lingered – because if it's in you, no matter how much you fight it, I believe that it will never ever go away.
I felt hurt and cloudy. When I tried to write again I was around eighteen and it just wasn't good. I was too young to collect my thoughts in a meaningful way and too old and too self-conscious to just put my words out there without the urge to overwork them. So I declared this to be not my thing and entered adult life, leaving what I love behind – both writing of words and melodies. Of course I also surrounded myself with people who reinforced that this was the right thing to do. It was easier. I didn't want to feel simply.
Yet however hard I tried to shut it out, even if I ignored it completely, the need to play with words and create was there and it found its way to the surface in odd and immensely annoying ways. I drove my poor professors at university crazy with long, dramatic strings of thoughts – in business studies, because of course I chose the coldest subject possible, just to be as far away from my touchy-feely words as possible. I also sent never-ending text messages to friends and long-winded letters for even the simplest customer service issues. Looking back, it was such a clear cry for help.
Everyone said that I should write, but that in my work I should be more concise. There were days when I felt that words would simply explode in me. But I became a master at splitting myself from this authentic self. If I just tried hard enough, I thought, I could be more to the point, just like everybody else. But everything was getting worse – my mood, my health and my work in general.
Everything I produced seemed to be okay but just not right for what it was meant to be. In the end I wrote smart business plans and graduated with excellent grades, but I was far from happy. University was done and I felt pointless and empty, wondering what I should do. At this point I had been teaching various subjects for years, and so I channelled my writing and performing ambitions into curriculums and lesson plans. I loved – and still love – teaching, and so it took the edge off, but I just couldn't settle.
I was almost completely blind to my passion, my gift, my love for words. I didn't understand that I had something to say that was trying to find its way out. When everyone told me that they liked how I told stories, especially about my life, I didn't think I really should do it – maybe one day, I thought. When I helped everyone around me with their writing exercises, I was just glad to help and felt lucky that my mum always encouraged me to read and organise my thoughts neatly. When I learnt two new languages and thoroughly enjoyed their literature and was able to write in those too, I just thought it was fun and didn't really know what to do with it. Or at least I didn't want to know.
I was in a headspace where I believed I wouldn't be good enough to be a writer, and all this feedback was somehow coincidental – no matter how many times a tiny voice in my head whispered: you must write. It spoke to a part of me I ignored completely.
Did I ever catch myself dreaming of how I see myself in my forties and onwards? Oh yes. In moments when I didn't watch myself, I saw myself on television hosts' comfy chairs introducing my new book, or sitting at my computer delivering important articles on a deadline, or doing readings for an intimate audience from my newest pieces. But the closest I ever let myself get to the idea that I actually am a writer – lyricist, songwriter, essayist, no matter what type – was imagining myself as an old and graceful Jessica Fletcher, who finally in her seventies succeeded and allowed herself to actually be a writer: what she was always meant to be.
Three of us
But then something happened. I became a mother and I just didn't know what to say to my tiny pink newborn. Suddenly I wanted to say everything. Suddenly I wanted to select the words most carefully and yet say all of them at the same time. Suddenly I wanted this little person to love words and music as much as I do, or at least to see their beauty so one day he could choose to like it. So I wrote him a song and read and sang every day. Slowly, with the tiniest invisible steps, I started to reconnect with my words and learnt how to organise them better than ever. By the time my second son was born, stories and music were again part of my life, but I kept it very quiet. Just for the three of us.
I didn't have an easy start as a mum. Bucketloads of unexpected challenges came, and I had to make a decision: how I want to raise my kids, what I want them to see of who I am, and who I want to be when they fly the nest. For years I had been muting myself, trying to live like any 'normal person' – up early, work, bed on time, never staying up late just because the words are flowing, never letting myself be away for a night to reconnect with music. I kept such a hard grip on my emotions that by the time I was a mum of two, I was living someone else's life. I was on a path that didn't belong to me. It made me sick, empty and depressed.
This path attracted the wrong people. People who expected 'normal'. People who didn't understand the real me at all. People who harmed me, because my self-esteem was so low that their hurtful actions didn't even occur to me for such a long time. But I wanted my kids to know the real me. And I decided to reconnect with my emotions, passion and talents no matter what. It was a wake-up call: if I want my children to be happy and free, I have to show that that's the norm. The norm can't be hiding in the search of a non-existing normal.
It took me years of therapy and careful self-exploration. It took international moves and a divorce, but with every step on the way I felt closer to the little bored girl who was inspired by the autumn leaves. With every step on the way, my small boys smiled at me when I got a glimpse of my real, smiley, chaotic and creative self. Slowly, painstakingly, I liberated myself from everything and anybody, including my fears, who held my words back. The process bore a new me and a new life.
by Melì
The leap
After a long and winding road, three countries and three languages later, at the age of 34 I took the leap and finally got divorced and moved to Budapest to be with my Hungarian family. Little did I know that the shock of it all would be life-changing. At first I didn't even understand what it would mean to really be a single mum – I just knew things would be better and safer for my boys and me this way. I felt closer to myself than ever before. I felt my creative powers building up, but this time I was waiting for it. I listened and waited for what would happen next. I also purposefully reconnected with music and, with my mum's help, started to go out to be surrounded by fellow creatives.
Then love happened – at least I thought so. As someone who hadn't been on the dating market much in general, and after a thirteen-year hiatus especially, I really hadn't a clue how to do this and I ran in head first like a fifteen-year-old. I fell for a guy and for the idea of the whole thing. The stars and the moon were promised, of course, with a life where I would be loved – my boys and I – and a wonderful future on the horizon. Until something else appeared on that very perfect horizon: another girl who was less complicated, with a dog instead of kids, and I was yesterday's story before I could blink twice.
In my shock and shame, I walked down to see my friends at the music club to tell them what had happened. And there and then happened the most life-changing few seconds of my life. Instead of saying hi, one of them asked, in the most snide and insensitive way possible, “How is it being a single mum again?” This did it. It hit me so hard and inflicted such pain that finally it overflowed. All the grief and emotions I had ever hidden, for whatever reason, flooded me. The wasted years, all my losses and so much more.
After basically not being able to cry since I lost my grandmother, I cried for an entire week, day and night. I felt raw. I felt mad. I felt. I felt everything.
I wanted to get the pain out of my body urgently, and in a moment when the kids weren't at home – between two cigarettes (they never saw me smoke and I quit ever since) and two howling sessions across a sea of used hankies – I dragged myself to the piano. And just like on that morning on the way to kindy, it came before I could understand what was happening: the pain became a melody and the melody became words.
Three times the love, three times the pain,
Three times the life, you threw away,
And if your heart wakes up one day,
Three times the hurt is yours to take.
This time I didn't let it go. This time I stayed in the moment. I stayed with the incredible pain and I directed the words and the melody it brought. I allowed myself to feel, to stop and restart. I allowed myself to wait and breathe – and 3x was born. First the chorus, then the rest. Finally I polished the frame that the song starts and ends with.
I've got new boots, they're nice and pink
I've got new life, it shines and blinks.
I've got no tears to spare for you
I've got no chance to give to you.
The frame that emerged from the very moment I was writing it. Forged from my resilience and anything good I could scrape from the bottom of my bleeding heart, something new was born. Something that is no longer afraid to show itself. Something brought to life by the true force of creative yearning. Something that is made of words, melodies and passion. And a promise that no one will ever get a chance to take my voice, or throw away the three of us. Hence the new, very pink boots – which in fact I never had for real, but if I ever see a pair I like, you bet I'm going to have them.
My fingers connected with the black and white keys, my pen's ball danced on the paper and the pain transformed into a creation. With it my scattered selves united, and finally I was in the here and now, doing what I was always supposed to do: write. Channel something I feel into words and music, to tell a story which leaves my soul and connects to yours. A story which will float in the world and become part of anyone else's who hears it. Part of the tapestry of knowledge we share and all live from.
Overwhelmed but immensely relieved, eyes red and puffy, I found a moment away from the kids and went to my friends to lay down the chords for my first ever song. At this point I had never held a guitar in my hand. I studied flute and vocals in school. I use the keys to compose melodies and, most importantly, apart from two a cappella lullabies and a bunch of funny stuff as a kid, I had never written a song in my life. Poems and essays yes, but I never thought of myself as a songwriter. It just happened.
My friends were incredibly supportive. The song suddenly took shape and whenever I could get a night off I started to play it live at open mics in the clubs. I had no real idea what I was doing. I was a classically trained vocalist used to churches and echoey ballrooms, now singing in small clubs, amplified and completely out of my depth. But the songs wanted to come out, again and again. I was insecure but determined. I often made ugly mistakes but I kept on performing nevertheless. And the words… The words worked! When people heard 3x they started humming them immediately. It felt amazing. I couldn't have asked for more.
With 3x, I started out on a long journey of learning about lyrics, songwriting, live music, sound, guitars and so much more. At the same time I started writing essays and articles again and picked up photography to accompany my words.
Now, two years down the line, I've written many more songs, I have found my voice and now I'm building a band around it. I'm right before my very first concert on the 9th of May and I never want my words to stop flowing again. And cheers to that – without further ado, this was long enough of a detour to share the lyrics – here we go: Three Times!
Three Times — by Melì
Verse
I've got new boots, they're nice and pink
I've got new life, it shines and blinks.
I've got no tears to spare for you
I've got no chance to give to you.
Like a willow in early spring
I twist and turn, but won't give in.
Yes, I did weep and shed my tears
But roots in ground, I stand the years.
Chorus
Three times the love, three times the pain,
Three times the life, you threw away,
And if your heart wakes up one day,
Three times the hurt is yours to take.
Verse
Like wail of a loon by the misty lake
The children still call your name
And it echoes with all their pain
But I'm here for them, make no mistake.
Bridge
And I know you've tried, I know you've cried, I know you thought that that was life
But the things you've said and the things you've done are yours to deal with.
And I know you've tried, I know you've cried, I know you thought that that was life
But the things you've said and the things you've done are yours to deal with… there's no doubt.
Chorus 2x
Three times the love, three times the pain,
Three times the life, you threw away,
And if your heart wakes up one day,
Three times the hurt is yours to take.
Verse
I've got new boots, they're nice and pink
I've got new life, it shines and blinks.
I've got no tears to spare for you
I've got no chance to give to you.
Love,
Melì
PS: If you read this before 9 May 2026 and you wanna join HERE.
