I was 20 forty years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a good year, a seminal year in my life. I had finally left home as an adult, not some bullshit “running away” thing – I was no longer an immature teenager making a desperate attempt to escape an untenable situation. No, I was now an adult, ready to set out on the lifelong journey of discovering who I am, trying to invent who I would become. I tried to put a serious amount of distance between where I would start my journey and my hometown – I innately understood I could no longer have any real contact with my family. It’s a sad reality that for some people, their family is so toxic that for them to have any hope of becoming a functional human being, they must strike out on their own, severing ties with their past.
This I did, and although I was poor and had no idea how I would make it as a musician, I had no doubt I was pursuing the path I was destined for. And it was fucking glorious. The amount of joy I had in my heart every day I woke up alone with no friends, no family, and no future was absolutely overwhelming. I was finally free, and it was better than I could ever have imagined. Every day was a chance to start over, a new day to discover the world, a new opportunity to reinvent myself. To discover who I was and what I was capable of.
I would soon enough find hardship, but no matter how bad things got, they were better than what I left behind.
It was all beginning, and holy fuck was it beautiful…