The song “My Immortal” by Evanescence is really just a huge metaphor that has background music and a band behind it.  This song was published in 2000 and it’s not well known anymore.  I remember listening to it years ago, and although it wasn’t appealing to anyone else, I found myself stuck to it.  To this day, the song -- and the lyrics especially! -- have never left me, because everytime I hear this song, I am taken on a magical tour about a woman who is trying to step into reality after trying not to lose hope…

At the start of her journey, the narrator in the song feels weak and wastes her time crying and complaining about her troubles. She acknowledges that she is “so tired of being here/suppressed by all [her] childish fears” as evidence that she is caught in an infinite whirl of misery where happiness will never exist again. In the chorus, the singer introduces us to the nostalgia buried within her when she thinks about how her life used to be flawless when she and her true love had a bond of trust and affection that seemed everlasting. As she progresses onwards, Amy Lee (the lead singer) admits that everywhere she goes, the wonderful things that once enhanced her life now make her draw back in agony and fear. At this point, we realize that what the narrator is going through is not any ordinary sadness; it is a depressing, eternal affliction with more depth than most of us have ever experienced.

Because this sorrow has taken over her life, the singer admits that “[His] voice - it chased away all the sanity in me”, convincing us that the reminders of her past are driving Amy Lee out of her mind. As the song wraps up, the narrator has finally learned her lesson; though her beloved one is infinitely on her mind, he is gone, and all along as she has tried to be an optimist, she has been alone. What can she do about her broken heart? Absolutely nothing. She has tried to tell herself that he is not coming back, and yet her heart has tried to continue flying, hoping, and dreaming.  Amy Lee has never stopped believing in a bright future, even when her life has collapsed into a big hole of desperation.

That is where this song gets its name, “My Immortal”.  Normally, an immortal would be one who cannot die, but in the true core of this song, the word immortal is used metaphorically to symbolize a perpetual hope that cannot be broken down.