"you had all of them on your side, didn't you?I think from the start, he's talking to himself.
you believed in all your lies, didn't you?"
"the ruiner's got a lot to prove he's got nothing to lose and now he made you believeMaybe I'm obsessed...but now that Trent has admitted to getting fucked up on occasion, I'm thinking drugs are represented by the ruiner. The disease could be addiction.
the ruiner's your only friend well he's the living end to the cattle he deceives
the raping of the innocent you know the ruiner ruins everything he sees
now the only pure thing left in my fucking world is wearing your disease"
"how did you get so big?Besides the obvious male genitalia reference here...I think he's asking the addiction how it took hold of him like this.
how did you get so strong?
how did you get so hard?
how did it get so long?"
(next verse represents the same damn thing to me so why type it out?)
"what you gave to meAnother junkie reference. What makes scars like that? Needles. He talks to the heroin like it's a living entity...which in fact it is.
my perfect ring of scars
you know i can see what you really are"
"you didn't hurt me nothing can hurt meRenouncing the addiction...or a declaration of a small will to live still inside him through all the pain he feels. Maybe. Or maybe just another cool thing to whisper.
you didn't hurt me nothing can stop me now"
I can't even listen to it anymore.
It's like having eleven years of sexual abuse come back at me in 5 minutes.
"what you gave to meI still have them. They're faded brown, but they're still there.
my perfect ring of scars..."
"the ruiner's got a lot to prove...My molester used all kinds of manipulation -- mental, physical beating, psychosexual (trying to convince me I was totally screwed up and that I liked what he did to me, when in fact I didn't, and then in later years constantly remarking about my unintended androgyny). But it was easy for him, because he had already beaten me down for so long in such a traumatic manner.
....and now he made you believe"
"the ruiner's your only friend well he's the living end to the cattle he deceives..."My brother was viewed as a "great guy" by so many people -- relatives, friends, parents. He had everybody fooled. And I knew that there was no way to combat that. I knew there was nothing I could do that would change anything.
"the raping of the innocent..."Take it literally. The first encounter I remember was when I was 5 years of age.
"...now the only pure thing left in my fucking world is wearing your disease..."This is a key line for me, because the meaning of "pure thing" always changes. It can mean anything from my current love relationship, to my relationship with my parents, to my best friend, to the fact that I left my whole life behind to escape him....
"how did you get so big?"...(that chorus)I remember thinking something along these lines when I was seven. Lying in my bedroom, door locked, breathing heavily from being hit in the head a few times, sore from when he raped me a few minutes before. I remember almost throwing myself out the third-floor window onto the concrete below.
To me, "ruiner" is about coping with childhood abuse. Sexual, physical, verbal -- it really doesn't matter, because all types of abuse are so difficult to let go, especially if the abuse continued for several years. I know my case isn't the only one of its kind, even in the confines of alt.music.nin. But I'm hoping that being verbal about it, being up-front and saying, "Hey, it happened to me, too...you're not alone..." might help somebody struggling with it. I know it's incredibly difficult to get out of these situations, especially if you're a little kid. But you owe it to yourself to start working through it. Tell somebody. Even if you're not sure how they'll react. Talk about it with your close friends.
Tell somebody, because you'll go nuts if you don't.