Inspirations: When My Time Comes
There were moments of dreams I was offered to save
I lived less like a workhorse, more like a slave
I thought that one quick moment that was noble or brave
Would be worth the most of my life
So I pointed my fingers and shouted few quotes I knew
As if something that's written should be taken as true
But every path I had taken and conclusion I drew
Would put truth back under the knife
And now the only piece of advice that continues to help
Is anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else
When my time comes
When my time comes
So I took what I wanted and put it out of my reach
I wanted to pay for my successes with all my defeats
And if Heaven was all that was promised to me
Why don't I pray for death?
Now, it seems like the unravelling started too soon
Now I'm sleeping in hallways and I'm drinking perfume
And I'm speaking to mirrors and I'm howling at moons
While the worse and the worse that it gets
Oh, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks
Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back
When my time comes
When my time comes
Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks
Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back
When my time comes
When my time comes
When my time comes
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Taylor Goldsmith
When My Time Comes lyrics © Taylor Goldsmith Songs, Arc Music Corp
This song feels like a confession whispered into a cracked mirror. Not heroic. Not polished. Human in the way that admits we are always bargaining with our lives, trading one ache for another, pretending the trade will finally make sense.
There were moments of dreams I was offered to save. That line stays with me. It sounds like youth, like the early bargains we make with ourselves. I will suffer now so I can be free later. I will work harder, love better, endure longer. I will become noble through effort alone. But the song cuts through that myth. Living “less like a workhorse, more like a slave” speaks to how easily purpose turns into punishment. You think you are building a life, and suddenly you are owned by it.
I recognize the urge in this song to be brave in one single, cinematic moment. To believe that one right choice, one grand stand, one clean act of courage will justify the rest of the mess. I have done that. I have pointed at borrowed wisdom, shouted quotations like spells, hoping language itself would save me. As if something written could replace something lived. But every conclusion, every moral shortcut, keeps putting truth back under the knife. You don’t escape pain by naming it beautifully.
The most devastating line is also the most honest. Anyone that’s making anything new only breaks something else. Creation is not gentle. Becoming is violent in quiet ways. Every version of myself I tried to save required another version to disappear. Safety broke curiosity. Survival broke innocence. Stability broke freedom. We talk about growth like it’s upward, but it is also a demolition.
Then the song slips into disintegration. Sleeping in hallways. Drinking perfume. Talking to mirrors. Howling at moons. That is the language of someone who no longer fits inside their own life. I know that place. The place where you don’t quite belong to rooms anymore, where identity loosens, where even reflection feels like a stranger. It is what happens when striving outruns meaning. When success costs too much and still feels unpaid.
The abyss line lands like a warning flare. You can stare into the abyss, but it’s staring right back. We like to believe we are observers of darkness. But the truth is darker: the more you interrogate emptiness, the more it begins to interrogate you. Long enough inside questions and you start becoming one.
And still, the refrain is not despair. When my time comes. Not rushed. Not romanticized. Just accepted. It feels less like death and more like arrival. Like saying, I will stop forcing the shape of my life and let it meet me instead.
For me, this song reflects the long middle of living. Not the beginning where dreams are clean. Not the end where answers pretend to exist. But the in-between where ambition bruises into awareness. Where you realize you cannot outthink pain, quote your way out of it, or perform your survival. You can only live honestly inside the breakage.
This song doesn’t offer rescue. It offers recognition. That becoming costs. That saving yourself sometimes means losing the story you were trying to prove. That staring into who you are is dangerous and necessary.
And when my time comes, I hope it isn’t about finishing. I hope it is about finally stopping the bargain. About standing still long enough to let life stop feeling like a transaction and start feeling like a presence. Not conquered. Not solved. Just, at last, inhabited.
