Day Sixty-One: "Torn Between The Unknown and the Place that I Call Home"

The quote in my title is from an Uncle Tupelo song. I have loved this song and Uncle Tupelo since the nineties. I even made these lyrics part of my senior thesis in college when I wrote about first generation blue collar women's struggle in college, career choice and feminism. I continue to identify with the lyrics as I have led a life so different than what I was shown growing up. I feel I'm walking into the unknown in all aspects compared to my family: going to college, having a career, marrying in my mid-thirties, no kids, living outside of the USA, healthy living & exercising, reading, and now living without alcohol...for 61 days and counting.

Here are the lyrics from Uncle Tupelo's "Looking For A Way Out"
When you find you can't somehow
Make it like all the rest
You won't need to scrounge around for someone else
Torn between the unknown
And the place that you call home
And the life you want but have never known

There was a time
You could put it out of your mind
Leave it all behind
There was a time
That time is gone

What has a life of fifty years
In this town done for you
Except to earn your name and place on a bar stool
You spent your whole life in this county
You never been out of state
You say you're gonna make it out before it's too late

There was a time
You could put it out of your mind
Leave it all behind
There was a time
That time is gone

There was a time when nothing seemed to make much sense
That's turned more intense
And all the crutches you've kept around
Now are nowhere to be found

Remember when you didn't have
To look ahead or behind you
There was always something right there to do
But now it's life in some kind of trap looking for a way out
Well, you keep moving on
That's what it's all about

There was a time
You could put it out of your mind
Leave it all behind
There was a time
That time is gone

I read this song so differently now than I did twenty years ago. At 15 I wasn't drinking and was focused on a way out from a life like my mom: a housewife with little power or independence-I ran from Chicago into academia before I got trapped into a marriage similar to my parents, which I thought would just happen to me no matter what I did. Now, I read into the ideas of letting go of crutches that I kept.  Crutches that kept my in a place, if not physically but mentally. "The way out" can't only be physical escape. I've done that and largely have brought myself with me wherever I go.  The way out is also mental and emotional, letting go of the crutches that hold me in patterns.

Thanks Uncle Tupelo. Here's another dark drinking song that I still love by them:  Moonshiner.  Take a listen... "If whiskey don't kill me, Lord, I don't know what will." Sing it Jay, I'm not in that dark place anymore, there is a way out...