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Yesterday, I attached the latest Blink 182 video to my first post back. I ran across it on YouTube and well... I fell in love with the tone of it. I wouldn't say I'm a Blink 182 fan, but I do enjoy some of their songs, but there is something about the tone and emotion in One More Time that just feels relevant to me at this stage in my life.
The music video is beautifully shot, and they utilize old footage along with superimposing the band over old backdrops of previous music videos and concert performances. Again, I don't have much of a connection to the band, but I do have a connection to the time frame so seeing them in front of the Vans Warped Tour 99 stage tugged a bit on my soul. And that's when I realized the song hit so close, because of my birthday two months away.
This year has been a rollercoaster of emotions in regard to the big 4-0 approaching. I won't rehash all the details, but let's just say I have not felt great about entering this next decade of my life. I've had some regrets about decisions I've made, and paths I took, and I've done the worse thing a person can do, and I've compared my current station in life to my father which only made me feel like a failure.
But the one emotion I haven't experienced is grief... and that is the one that has emerged over the past twenty-four hours. I'm grieving for my youth and the opportunities I had. I grieve for the hopeful, bright eyed, optimist of my early twenties who seems to be lost forever. I grieve for what was and what could have been.
When I think about the past and growing up, I don't pat the guy on the back who got dealt a bad hand and made the most of it. Instead, I second guess him, beat him down for not being smarter or braver, and then compare him to others to show him what his bad mistakes got him. I tend to overlook the ideocracies that usually pop up in my comparisons such as "Yeah, he may have more money, but look how miserable he is. Look at his marriage failing" or "Yeah, they may have a solid career and vacation all the time but look at the home life. Look at the depression." I just focus on the successful part and leave the bad parts behind, because that doesn't help my agenda in punishing myself for not being more successful.
The song is clearly about the reconnecting of the band members and while most of the lyrics do not speak to me, there are a few moments that just seem to hit on a level that goes beyond the words they are saying.
I don't want to act like this tomorrow.
I want to be at peace in aging. I want to find a little nugget of hope that things will turn out to be better than they are today. I don't want to keep feeling like my life is slipping away.
I miss you.
When I began thinking about the grief I have, I realized I miss the old part of me. The less cynical, battered, and exhausted version of myself. I miss being less distracted.
Maybe it's a melancholy type of day. It's overcast, I'm tired, I've been sick all week, and so much is going on that is stressful right now. But I managed to find a little peace while listening to this song over the past twenty-four hours.