Now I Realize What Jimmy was Trying to Say - Time Goes by Like Hurricanes

When I was a teenager my friends were in love with: Aaron Lewis from Staind, Fred Durst, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, a slew of WWE (nee WWF) wrestlers and professional athletes (there's always that one friend, right?) and members of various boy bands. Among others of his ilk, I was in love with Gregg Allman. Yeah, I have no idea either.

I really didn't adopt jam band culture in totality (I was never really into Grateful Dead, for example), but there was something about Gregg Allman that I liked that I can't identify. God rest his blonde ponytail. I never buy rock n' roll records, but I might now that I have my own space to jam into. Brothers and Sisters, anyone? 

One of my favorites of The Allman Brothers Band was on their 1994 album Where It All Begins (total disclosure: Dickey Betts wrote it, not Gregg Allman), surprisingly enough. As a kid listening to records from the seventies for the first time, I had no concept of what the singles were, so I just listened to whatever and picked what I liked. When I got dial-up, I found people that liked the things that I liked and they shared their favorites. When I heard, "No One to Run With," at fourteen,  I thought about how this must've been what my parents' friends felt like that had no family and still loafed at The Village Inn during the week. 

Well Tony got a job, three kids and lovely wife/Working at a commerce bank for the rest of his life.

I still remember one of my parents telling me that a Village regular named Pat had died - when I sat beside him there and watched him eat a huge roast beef sandwich two days before that. It's weird what you remember when you're a kid. It's weird how it sticks with you. It's weird when twenty years later you realize that you're more like Pat than like your parents.

When I got well I started to unpack all of the commitments that I made to people that didn't make them back, to things that I didn't actually care about and to situations that didn't benefit me, I started to see freedom. I'm still doing that, but what I am noticing is that it is a lonely life to do it. There is a part of me that knows that many people are codependent and create need where none actually resides. There is a part of me that understands that people are overextended and committed to whatever things for whatever reason. There is a part of me that has compassion for those situations where it is appropriate. Compassion and understanding paired with healthy boundaries and freedom is isolating. That was totally unexpected.

I think Jimmy must've had the right idea/Packed his stuff and he got right out of here.

There is, also, the anxiety that never goes away on some level - no matter how well I feel. It tells me that when no one is around it is because no one cares enough to want to or to try. That when people bail on plans, are unwilling to be spontaneous, or can't ever commit to things it is because they don't like me. Then, the unloveability creeps in and takes up residence again - at least in that moment. The Four Agreements tell me that I shouldn't take it personally. That whatever happens is not about me, it is about them. That's easy for Don Miguel Ruiz to say - he has seven hundred kids and people that spend thousands of dollars to sweat on a mountain beside him in Mexico several times year. On the inverse, there are the Chester Benningtons of the world - surrounded by love and praise, never see it and stand totally alone in their choice to permanently remove themselves from the world. 

The realization that I have cultivated the freedom of the twenty-something at almost thirty-five hits hard. I never had the life of the twenty-something the first time around and it occurred to me: that much of that kind of freedom comes from being able to share it with those that are on the path to discovery at that age. That in some ways, the coziness of domesticity, safety, nesting, sameness, commitment and tethers also bring their own kind of freedom that I never felt when I had them, either. That this flip-flop isn't something that is wrong with the entire world, but is something that brings about the chance for me to define what I like about having a weirdly free and isolated life and what I don't like so much. Then, fix the second part.

Don't know where I'm going, like a gypsy on the road/I'll go someplace and join a travelin' show.

I told my friend Nathan that I lack a posse. Wherever they are - they are not to be found in people that I wish would act differently than they do or want to. They are where I will find them when I am clear about what I want and meet people where they are instead of where my expectations rest. The envy that I see when people share their tales of relaxed togetherness is a tale that they've cultivated and not a tale of unloveability.

You don't need no gypsy to tell you why/Ya can't let one precious day slip by/Well look inside yourself and if you don't see what you want, maybe sometimes then ya don't/Leave you mind alone and just get high