nostalgia

A friend of mine from SF who is on tour with his band was in town a couple of days ago. Let's call him Waylan. It's somewhat strange to see him because we dated and I felt like he broke my heart into a million pieces in our short-lived "relationship." I put that word into quotation marks mostly because it was more like the thought that we might have a relationship than us actually having one. Things turned bad really fast. It was not entirely his fault. I was entering this really confusing - like 4 year - phase in my life where, and I feel like this sounds crazy, I was abandoning the person I was and figuring out how to be the person I now am. Let's be clear. I am not totally different. But I was undergoing this intense process of realigning my commitments and Waylan, being a career musician, felt to me like going backwards. I remember telling him, "I swore to myself I'd never date another musician." He said, "I swore I'd never date another non-musician." Hey, at least we were on the same page.

A lot of rock musicians live a pretty hard life - playing shows, going to shows, touring, drinking, partying after the shows, drinking more, flirting, doing drugs, drinking more. This is not to say that this is the standard formula. But it isn't uncommon either. And I was trying to define myself outside of my subcultural tastes and more in terms of what I do (rather than what I like that other people do). I really like music, don't get me wrong. But shows are kind of boring unless you're getting drunk or you might get laid. I was just kind of sick of watching other people fulfill their creative aspirations and being too tired or hungover to fulfill my own.

So, Waylan - all I could say to him was, "this won't work." And when he finally said, "maybe it won't," for some reason my heart shattered. What I think that signified to me was this last break from who I was. It kind of meant I was completely alone. I had not yet figured out how to commune with people who were more in line with who I wanted to become. The yoga folks in SF were pretty hardcore and defined themselves primarily along those lines. That wasn't for me. I didn't really know how to plug into the activist milieu, and really wasn't quite sure what being a "big time activist" entailed given I worked on dinky projects with like 3 people in Baltimore. Frankly, I was a little out of my league in SF. I moved there to not feel crazy. It did eventually work out that way, but it certainly took a while.

Being on the other side of all that feels really good. I still suffer from loneliness and self-doubt, but seeing Waylan reminded me of how far I've come, how confident I actually am compared to my 20s and it feels pretty good.