CHALLENGER'S RAP

• Those three-plus years, I was so proud of
• Then I threw them all away for two Styrofoam cups
• The irony, everyone will think that "He lied to me"
• Made my sobriety so public, there's no fucking privacy
• If I don't talk about it then I carry a date
• A "08/10/08" that now has been changed
• And everyone that put me in some box as a saint
• That I never was, just a false prophet that never came
• And will they think that everything that I've written has all been fake?
• Or will I just take my slip to the grave?
• What the fuck are my parents gonna say?
• The success story that got his life together and changed
• And you know what pain looks like
• When you tell your dad you relapsed and you look at him directly into his face
• Deceit on…your shoulders, deceivingly heavy weight
• Haven't seen tears like this on my girl in a while
• The trust that I once built's been betrayed
• But I'd rather live tellin' the truth than be judged for my mistakes
• Than falsely held up, given props, loved and praised
• I guess, I gotta get this on the page
• Feelin' sick and helpless
• Lost the compass where self is
• I know what I've gotta do, and I can't help it
• One day at a time is what they tell us
• Now I've gotta find a way to tell them
• God help 'em, yeah
• One day at a time is what they tell us
• Now I've gotta find a way to tell them
• We fought so hard
• Now we gotta get back what we lost, lost
• But you were with me all along, along
• And every kid that came up to me
• And said I was the music they listened to when they first got clean, now look at me
• A couple days sober, I'm fighting demons
• Back of that meeting on the East Side, shakin', tweakin'
• Hope that they don't see it, hope that no one is lookin'
• That no one recognizes that failure under that hoodie
• Just posted in the back with my hands crossed, shooken
• If they call on me I'm passin' it, if they talk to me I'm bookin'
• Somebody stops me and says "Are you Macklemore?
• "Maybe this isn't the place or time, I just wanted to say that"
• "If it wasn't for 'Otherside' I wouldn't have made it"
• I just looked down at the ground and say "Thank you"
• She tells me she has 9 months and that she's so grateful
• Tears in her eyes lookin' like she's gonna cry, fuck
• I barely got forty-eight hours, treated like I'm some wise monk
• I want to tell her I relapsed, but I can't
• I just shake her hand and tell her "Congrats"
• Get back to my car, and I think I'm trippin', yeah
• 'Cause God wrote 'Otherside', that pen was in my hand
• I'm just a flawed man, man I fucked up
• Like so many others, I just never thought I would
• Doin' it by myself didn't turn out that good
• If I can be an example of gettin' sober
• Then I can be an example of startin' over
• If I can be an example of gettin' sober
• Then I can be an example of startin' over
• We fought so hard
• Now we gotta get back what we lost, lost
• But you were with me all along, along
• Now we gotta get back what we lost, lost