Summer had just begun and I was hanging out in my bedroom, dinking around.

Windows open, the breeze coming in often enough to cause the half-opened blinds to softly tap-tap-tap against the sill.

Music from Rock 106.9 WRQK plays from the speakers of my purple boombox behind the pillows on my bed.

A tune I don’t recognize starts playing and as I often did, I jump up to turn up the volume and listen:

25 years and my life is still
Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means

I sat down on the floor and just…

Listened.

And seemingly out of nowhere, I start just openly weeping there on my bedroom floor while the song continues:

And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed
Just to get it all out what’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
“What’s going on?”

I don’t think what is happening to me seems rational at all but for some reason I roll with it.

I lean in, instead of running away.

I’ve never just cried for no reason before.

But this felt good

This felt therapeutic.

And there, in the privacy of my room, I could let this all out without fear of anyone reacting to my emotion and threatening to “give me something to cry about”.

It felt so invigorating and painful and raw, and it was the first time I have ever connected to myself. It is the first time I remember feeling alive.

25 years and my life is still
Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination, mmm

The radio cuts to commercial and I just sit there, still, drowning out the radio, my room, my life and everything in it.

The wind stops blowing. The blinds stop tapping. Everything dissolves to silence and there is nothing.

“I want my Mommy”, I hear myself say, out loud, to no one.

I cry there, alone on my floor, in my room, until I feel foolish.

I don’t even know what “Mommy” means.

I wipe my eyes.

I take a deep breath.

I exhale.

I stand up.

And move about the rest of my life.