182. Song No. 2,743: “Down and Out,” The Academy Is…
Almost Here, 2005

Now that I’m grown
I’ve seen marriages fall to pieces
Now that I’m grown
I’ve seen friendships fall to pieces
Weekend warriors and our best friends
The writers weren’t kidding about how all good things must end…

When I first heard this song in college, when it was the soundtrack to the freedom of that era’s antics, when we were singing it as loud as we could against the summer wind whipping across our faces, I had no idea how to process the things this song addresses with any real understanding of them as tangible realities versus stories to experience secondhand.

I hadn’t ben dragged through an abusive relationship I chose to hide rather than leave. I hadn’t lived through a spectacularly imploding marriage. I hadn’t thrown people out of my life with the ferocity of finally coming to terms with what “I don’t ever want to see you again” means when your entire being rejects the entirety of another’s out of self-preservation. I’d felt distance slowly pull apart presumably stable connections into hopelessly tangled messes with no chance of being restored to their initial splendor, but I had no idea that trying to survive the divide was an option filled with its own terrible reward.

The inherent introspection that accompanies one year ceding to another seems to be unavoidable when surviving another year of this apparently hellscape decade feels less like a given and more like an accomplishment: Itemizing all the ways the outgoing year tried to fucking kill you has a way of collapsing the beforetimes into a maybe not stark but at least dimly registered parade of waypoints.

Just like “Don’t Carry It All,” timely associations and deeply personal significance influenced how “Down and Out” hit and, oooooof, does this one actually sting. Academy Is… is already a relic from a brief but fondly recalled era filled with people I loved hard and who meant the world to me then but who also largely belong to the past, casting its accompanying songs in the glow of nostalgic affection. I’m used to that period’s sense of being preserved in amber and always just out of reach.

What I’m not used to, though, is something that belongs to another chapter taking a swing through time to land one breathtaking gutpunch. I have spent most of the pandemic’s nearly two years becoming more and more disappointed in how people I used to consider family have been carrying on like entitled brats who are entirely too proud of putting their inability to sit alone with their thoughts on display. (The less we say about the worst offender’s uncanny impressions of narcissistic parents staging emotional hostage situations, the better.)

It sucks realizing that it’s time to move on from a core group of friends but I can say with the utmost conviction that it’s infinitely harder to cut ties with them than it was to go no-contact with my parents, if the length of time I’ve been delaying the inevitable is any indication. It’s actually comforting to admit they could lodge just as many complaints about me at this point, in a Picking Fights With Everyone Before Graduation to Make Saying Goodbye Easier kind of way. What’s even better, though, is getting pissed off at myself for putting so much energy into these people who never loved me as much as I loved them when there were so many better people around me I could’ve been enjoying a mutually beneficial closeness with. But, hey, if I’ve learned anything in the past couple years, it’s that the best time to make better choices was 10 years ago but the second-best time is now.

Everything is finite and the good times are fated to end just as the darkest timelines will finally pass, too. It’s hard to ride out the deepest lows and hang on ’til dawn, but it’s even harder to dig in your heels and accept nothing less than the world repositioning itself according to your demands. Wishful thinking and willful delusion don’t help anyone, and inhibiting your own growth brings ruinous fallout with one helluva blast radius. Life doesn’t owe anyone stagnancy even when it’s comfortable and familiar, and shedding your old self to grow with—and occasionally to spite—the world is the only way to avoid the horror of realizing how much you lost while standing in place as the world kept moving on without you.

The writers weren’t kidding
But the good things will live in our hearts