What's the zip code for The Stoney End?

I fear that's where I'm headed -- The Stoney End. As a physical location, it doesn't exist. As an emotional destination, it couldn't be more real. In the early 1970s Laura Nyro wrote and recorded "Stoney End" about a place you somehow find yourself, a place you never wanted to go. Streisand covered it when I was too young to understand it.

Well, I understand it now. And now that I'm a resident of The Stoney End, I realize she has given us the definitive version of our national anthem:

"Never mind the forecast cause the sky has lost control,
cause the fury and broken thunder's come to match my raging soul,
now I don't believe I want to see the morning.
Going down the Stoney End, I never wanted to go down the Stoney End.
Mama, let me start all over. Cradle me, mama, cradle me."

Babs does my screaming for me. You should hear what she does with the lyric about her/my/our "raging soul."

I will get through this. I always do. I'm really a very strong woman and I have a lot of friends. I still have my mother and I still have my faith.

But I can't pretend I'm not hurting. I can't pretend I'm not overwhelmed. It's perfectly natural to be feel sad when crappy things happen to and around me. I simply have to work through this in order to get past it. Since I am completely and utterly tone deaf, I have to let Babs put voice to my pain. I shall let her. My iPod is right here.

I do wonder, though, if it wouldn't be easier on my poor coworkers if Billie Holliday was the diva who spoke to my pain. She was quieter, always sounding so gloriously anesthetized as she suffered.