The Early Years...

That Bruce Springsteen memoir is still rattling around in my consciousness. 

I have been flashing back to my own childhood. So much of Bruce's early life seemed so similar to my early life. Catholic Grade School. Forbidding Nuns. Mass every morning. Hell. Sin. Damnation. Stations of the Cross. Big family. Difficult relationship with my father. Shy. Super-introverted. And then in certain places and times totally extroverted. Rebelling against the way things are. Finding music early. Growing my hair long. Not fitting in. 

I almost dropped the book when Bruce said his best friend was a kid named Bobby Duncan! Holy Shite! My best friend was a kid named Bobby Duncan!

Always trying to escape. Leave. Vanish. Get away. Feeling trapped. Worried about getting sucked into the cycle of failure and humiliation. Vowing not to be my father. Seeking my father's love. Unable to really communicate all the most important things to the people I loved and cared about.

The book churned up so much of the old stuff. And you think, all of it counts, none of it disappears, nothing is resolved. Everything is just part of who you are today. Whether you think about it or not. We work thru our experiences, try to incorporate them, carry them forward, or transform them, make them work, try not to be consumed or destroyed by them.

That's the trick... easier said, or thought, than done.