I Should Be Allowed To Think: How one TMBG lyric nailed what it felt like growing up gaslit.

I broke down a TMBG song about performative rebellion and accidentally used it to unpack my childhood with a BPD parent.

The back cover of John Henry, where “I Should Be Allowed to Think” sits tucked between some absolute bangers and personal landmines.

Standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, my feet are beginning to tingle. I’m reminding myself of a trick I learned in elementary school choir: don’t lock your knees or you’ll pass out. Or fall over. I can’t remember which.

I’m in 8th grade. My mom has been talking at me from a prone position in bed for the last 45 minutes.

Next to her: a nightstand. Lamp. Large glass of iced caffeine-free Diet Pepsi. An ashtray. And a small air filtering machine struggling to keep up with her chain-smoking Merit cigarettes.

When a Song Hits a Nerve

Trying to get a word in is impossible. Retaining anything? Futile. The narrative is non-linear, nonsensical, accusatory. Someone in the family has done her wrong. A doctor is refusing to prescribe name-brand medicine. Or, more in line with today’s essay, I’m trying to express my feelings, and she’s rephrasing them into things I’ve done to hurt her.

What I’m feeling isn’t being heard; it’s being rewritten.
I haven’t learned the term gaslighting yet. But I know I’m not being allowed to think my own thoughts.

Track Six is a Personal Trigger

We’re continuing our march through They Might Be Giants’ album John Henry. The sixth track is I Should Be Allowed to Think.

I love this song, despite the less-than-nostalgic feelings it stirs up.
John Linnell is playing what sounds like an organ (or a killer patch on a keyboard), and Flansburgh does his signature backup vocals and electric guitar thing that only Flansy can bring. More songs need organs.

Yeah, I skip it sometimes. Depends on where I am emotionally. A common occurrence with this album.

But is this song a banger? One hundred percent.

The Personal Experience I Use as a Decoder Ring

I grew up with a mom who I’m 99% sure had borderline personality disorder. Never diagnosed, but once I found a BPD resource website in the early 2000s. It was the first time I saw someone put into words all the things I was experiencing from the outside as a kid growing up. Suddenly, all the pieces started fitting together.

I would end up moving out of my mom’s house into a relationship with someone else who showed all the same traits. That relationship lasted just over sixteen years. Now, I’m married to my wife. A person who has and continues to participate in the treatment and recovery plan for her BPD. That part matters a lot.

I feel uniquely qualified to recognize this particular flavor of neuro-spiciness. I’ve put in my 10,000 hours.

DARVO: Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender

My mom had a way of redirecting any conversation back to herself. You could be mid-sentence and suddenly you’re responding to something she’s upset about instead.

A term I learned from Stop Walking on Eggshells really stuck: DARVO.
It stands for:

• Deny

• Accuse

• Reverse Victim and Offender

This isn’t just deflection. It’s a survival mechanism for people with BPD. Criticism or confrontation registers as rejection, and their brain scrambles to protect itself by flipping the narrative.

It happened to me constantly. I’d express discomfort or try to talk through something that hurt me, and she’d:

1. Deny it happened (either outright or with a non-response)

2. Bring up something I did to hurt her (whether real, perceived, or made up entirely).

3. Make me the offender, herself the victim.

Eventually, you start to doubt your own memory. You question whether you’re the problem.

And when no one else is validating your version of events, your thoughts begin to feel like they’re not even your own.

When the Lyrics Hit Too Close

So when I first heard these lyrics, something stirred immediately.

I am not allowed To ever come up with a single original thought

And:

And I should be allowed to blurt the merest idea

If by random whim, one occurs to me

But sadly, this can never be

I am not allowed to think

That feeling? That was living with my mom. That was my adolescence. That’s the absence of autonomy.

Except… That’s Not What the Song Is About

In reality, this song is satirical.

The opening line is borrowed (with permission) from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a 1956 poem famous for railing against war, capitalism, conformity, and state violence. Howl gave voice to the oppressed and queer communities in a time when they were actively (and violently) persecuted.

I don’t write these because I’m trying to go viral—I write them because they feel like therapy with better background music.
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In contrast, “I Should Be Allowed to Think” seems to mock a certain brand of Gen X faux-radicalism. The narrator isn’t resisting arrest for anti-war protests; they’re mad they can’t tape up posters or have a call-in show. They’re not being silenced by the state; they’re being ignored by reality.

The song itself becomes a Ginsbergian commentary on the performative, angsty, complaining nature of, not only an entire generation of the that time, but a prophecy of the entitlement of fame chasing generation of today. People who feel they are owed influencer status by sharing content with a safe point of view that appeals to as many demographics as possible for peak platform monetization.

So What Am I Doing Here?

I took a satirical song critiquing self-serious artists... and used it to process childhood trauma.

In doing so, maybe I became the very subject of its critique. But that’s the nature of art, right?

We bring our whole selves to what we hear. We superimpose our experiences, our wounds, our memories. Sometimes that turns a parody into a lifeline.

So I’m saying it anyway: I should be allowed to think.

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Ever had a song hit way harder than the artist probably intended? Meet me in the comments and tell me about it.

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