What It’s Like to Be Me: In the Beginning Pt 2, Insecurity

For most people, their teen years were awkward. Even the cool kids go through a bumbling gangly phases at some point between the ages of 12 and 18. In my life, that phase started a little younger than most and lasted a lot longer.

Insecurity dominated much of my adolescent years. I was bullied throughout junior high. I was the shortest of the boys in my church youth group. My friends were all taller, cooler, and wealthier than me. They lived in nicer houses and dressed in trendier clothes. I could never compare - a fact of which I was painfully aware. My self esteem suffered and I developed kinship with other geeks and outcasts like me. Through the years, I found solace in music that reassured me I wasn’t alone.

Goo Goo Dolls: “Naked”
There are songs that you adore from the first moment you hear it. This was that kind of song for me. John Rzeznik’s lyrics spoke to awkward loneliness. “No one hears me, never been, never felt, never thought I'd say a word.” Whoa. I knew that feeling. His second verse repeated that sense of alienation. “They don't need me, don't want me, don't hear a word I say.”

King’s X: “Sometime”
Being a teen is confusing. You’re going through biological and chemical changes. You get contradictory instruction from parents and teachers. Everyone has different expectations of you. You’re trying to create a sense of autonomy separate from your parents. You’re unsure of who you are and what you want. You emotions swing from one extreme to the other. “Sometime” reminds me what it was like to experience this constant state of flux. It’s a vulnerable song with no resolution as Doug Pinnick sings of divergent desires. Sometimes, he wants to give. Sometimes, he wants to take. To run. To stay. To live. To die.

Collective Soul: “Goodnight, Good Guy”
Despite being a nerdy kid and socially awkward, I still wanted people to like me. Even on my worst days, I aspired to be a decent human being. Above all else, I wanted to be a good guy. I wanted other people to look at me and say, “yeah, he’s a good dude.” It’s a noble ideal, but it’s exhausting. It takes a lot of energy to always appear to be good. And more effort to actually be good. You hear this sense of weariness in the song. “But days are longer as my heart gets weaker and I can only stay so strong. Well I'll just sit here like a wounded soul who's finding it difficult to just let go.”

Blue October: “Weaknesses”
My insecurity always seemed entwined with an acute (and sometimes painful) self-awareness. I knew exactly who I was and what I was capable of doing. The inverse was also true: I knew who I wasn’t and what I was incapable of doing. Those were my inadequacies, failures, and weaknesses. It’s this self-depreciative view of the ego behind Justin Furstenfeld’s lyrics, “My weaknesses - With their ugly faces on a day to day basis.”

Switchfoot: “Let That Be Enough”
Switchfoot has always held space for communicating my deepest hopes and fears in ways I could never express on my own – and in ways more beautiful than I would have ever invented. In “Let That Be Enough,” Jon Foreman described loneliness as being a “plane in the sunset with nowhere to land.” While the words he sang seemed to meet me where I was at that moment in my life, the second verse seemed to be prophetic. “It's my birthday tomorrow, no one here could know I was born this Thursday 22 years ago.” I was 19 when this song came out, and I was still living with my folks. The following summer, I moved to a different state with some friends. A year later, one friend moved back home and the other moved in with his girlfriend. By the time I got to my 22nd birthday, no one around me knew it was my day. And it happened to be on a Thursday.