If you enjoy finding and dwelling on other people's mistakes and imperfections If your life’s about collecting other people’s faults It’s a hopeful song in that the singer seems to have found peace with himself and his past, but also a bit melancholy in that he’s saying goodbye to someone who was once important to him. Overall, the song seems to be about growing up, letting go of past mistakes, and moving on from toxic relationships. This could be interpreted as the singer saying he’s no longer interested in being walked all over by this person, and that he’s done pretending to be friends. He seems to be speaking to someone in particular (perhaps a friend or ex-lover) when he says “Don’t give me that shit about friends, I’ve been there for you all along, Lord, I’ll never be there for you again”. But ultimately, he asserts, what’s more important is how people talk about you when you’re not there. The singer points out how easy it is for a child to pretend to be an adult and how we all can sometimes act like children, talking about others behind their backs. The second verse speaks to the idea of growing up and out of childish behaviors. Perhaps someone witnessed his actual descent, or it could be that someone saw through his facade and witnessed the pain and struggles he was hiding. The metaphor of the crumbling walls could represent his own psychological or emotional breakdown, and the fact that “someone saw it all” could be interpreted a few different ways. This metaphor is both literal and symbolic – it could refer to an actual physical space the singer has been in, or it could be an allusion to his life falling apart around him. He speaks of feeling his way through the dark “in a house of crumbling brick and plaster walls” and how someone saw it all. The singer asks if someone’s “life’s about collecting other people’s faults” and offers his own past mistakes as an example of how we all err at some point or another.

The first verse of Tim Barry’s song “Tacoma” deals with the difficulties of life and how we all make mistakes.

Tim barry memento mori lyrics