I was listening to this incredibly fascinating podcast that inspired this post. The podcast featured a real-life romantic couple who were discussing parental wounds. It just brought up so much stuff with me that I just needed to get it out.
I’m not about to bash Ann and Tony here. This isn’t what this is about.
To be crystal clear, my parents were amazing people. I am exactly who I am today because of their hard work, sacrifice, love, and encouragement.
But they were both deeply damaged souls. And that damage got on me.
For the past three days I’ve had this really obscure song stuck in my head. An obscure song by one of the most important artists in my life.
The song is called I’m Not The Same Without You from Donald Fagen’s Sunken Condos solo record from 2012. While this album isn’t quite the worldwide hit that The Nightfly was, it’s still a good record.
Reading the lyrics, the first verse of this song has hit me sideways, and I know it’s my Dad speaking to me from beyond to wake me up.
That’s what he does. He puts a song I haven’t thought about in years in my head and I figure out what he’s trying to tell me.
Here’s the opening verse.
“Since you’ve been gone, an awesome change has come about
My life is different now,
I’m not the same without you
I’m evolving at a really astounding rate of speed
Into something way cooler, than what I was before
I feel much stronger than I have in years
My mind is sharp, and my spirit’s high
Now people tell me the shape of my face is changing
I’ve grown an inch taller since you left
What in the world is going on? Please tell me.”
It’s obviously a song about a lover who leaves our main character. But that line “I’m evolving at a really astounding rate of speed. Into something way cooler, than what I was before” — hits me like a ton of rocks. Because I’ll argue that my evolution into the Ryan I am today (and will be becoming until the day I die) started the day that my Dad passed away.
I will never forget this one late lunch that my Dad and I had maybe about a year before he passed away. I had to go to work that afternoon at Best Buy. I think this was during my time trying to sell Samsung vacuums (when we never got a display model). I hated myself and I hated this job.
Dad and I had lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse.
Dad ordered his ribeye with a baked potato.
I ordered a New York strip with fries and broccoli. When I said “broccoli”, I remember Dad asking me “Are you okay?” Granted, this wasn’t something I’d done before around him, but it was something I’d started doing. The simple act of eating better…
At that moment, I felt belittled, and like I’d been accused of something.
It was almost as if making a choice to eat better was a vice somehow. Meanwhile, from booze to cocaine, Dad never met a vice he didn’t love.
My romantic relationships with women have been few and way far between in my life. And I deeply want and need that partnership in my life.
I’m about to say something I’m kind of embarrassed to admit. But since my trust in women is practically nonexistent, I’m terrified of women.
Don’t get me wrong. I love women. Many of my best friends are women. Several of my greatest mentors are women.
My Mom was emotionally unstable. She was prone to deep depression and even deeper self-hatred. Her alcohol abuse didn’t exactly help matters. And looking back on things, I’m absolutely positive now that she had some sort of mental illness.
I’ve met some amazing women in my life. These are brilliant, beautiful, rockstar beacons of light.
But I’m absolutely terrified of emotional intimacy with them.
I’ve been in therapy off and on since probably 2002. I’ve been working with coaches and transformational atmospheres since 2014.
And only up until the last couple years has either a coach or a therapist been a man.
I feel like my Dad was so emotionally cut off that I couldn’t ever see myself opening up in a professional way to a man. Dad numbed himself so much with drugs and alcohol that he just became emotionally distant.
I mean, I saw glimpses of his emotional soul from time to time. Like the time I saw him tearing up during the first time we saw Steely Dan in concert.
But for the most part, he was so consumed by his vices that I never saw just who he really was.
Let’s not get it twisted. I’m a writer of this quality today because my Mom worked with me and nurtured me so much when I was a child. And the only reason why I got so much out of that (and subsequent) Steely Dan concerts was because once upon a time, Dad put a copy of “Aja” in my hands and said “I think you’ll dig this.”
My parents were beautiful people. They really were.
But they were deeply damaged and tortured souls.
I thank them for that. It helped me to get to know myself that much better. And the guy I know today, I really love.
Mom, I forgive you. I forgive you for the uncertainty around relationships with women. I forgive you that I grew scared of women — with you at the top of the list. I forgive you for you illness and that I never believed you were sick.
Dad, I forgive you. I forgive you for the addictions. I forgive you for the emotional distance between us. I forgive you for me not living into my Hall Man truth.
I really am evolving at a really astounding rate of speed. Your Ry-Ry is gonna be okay.
