I’m in Love For the First Time

Jim James is a unicorn werewolf of a human being. With a voice evoking the spirits of the universe, a wild mane of curls, and the genius to write songs like “Steam Engine,” the frontman and primary songwriter for My Morning Jacket has long been one of my favorite musicians. While my fine hair couldn’t hold a curl, no matter the amount of product used, and my prose reads less lyrical than his, we do have a few things in common too. He’s transparent about his lifelong mental health struggles and has stated several times he’s still working through some deep rooted issues from being “ruthlessly bullied” in school.

The latter is something I frequently discuss in my own therapy sessions. “Amy, why am I still so fucked up over these things that happened to me when I was a teenager?” I plead with her to cure me. I’m embarrassed of how hung up I am over words and actions from thirty years ago. Amy always assures me. Jim does too. If a person as beautiful and evolved as he is has similar traumas, I can’t be that inferior, can I? And I can’t deny how powerful these events were. I have chronically low self esteem for many reasons, but the bullying is a primary one.

I imagine everyone is bullied to some degree, even the most attractive, most popular kids (It has to happen, right? I mean, Jim James, JIM JAMES, was relentlessly bullied.) But I’ve had some remarkably shitty things done to me. 10th grade, the year of the cafeteria ambush and ass slapping, the year I would lock myself in the bathroom—my house’s only one—every day after school and cry, the year of my double knee reconstruction, had to have been the worst. I shared homeroom with my primary tormentor. Not a morning passed without me sitting, clenched in my seat, body tight as if to shield me from his words, waiting for what he would say.

“I’ve never met an uglier person.”

“Your nose is so big. Only your ass is even bigger.”

“You’re disgusting.”

You may have read these things before. It comes up in several of my stories. What can I say? The scars on my hips and knees have faded through the decades, but wow, can these memories still sting. Like I ask Amy, why can’t I let them go?

My mother offered me a reprieve from his assault with the gift of a parent sanctioned school skipping in early December during that horrible sophomore year. She, along with my aunt and grandmother, took me and my cousin on a midweek bus trip to New York City to see the Rocketts Radio City Christmas Spectacular. My mother promised me a little extra too, for the show happened to fall on December 8th.

If I don’t count Paula Abdul (though I don’t know why I wouldn’t), The Beatles were my first music obsession. Growing up in a classic rock loving household, I was always captivated by the picture of the man with long hair and glasses (always had a type) on one of my parents’ albums, but it wasn’t until 1995, with the release of The Beatles Anthology, that my ears finally turned on to their music. I was 13, so my obsession blossomed into a fanaticism appropriate for a young teen. I devoured book after book on the Fab Four, covered my room with posters of the band throughout their years, and proudly wore shirts adorned with their images. I would fall asleep with a different Beatles album playing on my Walkman, fantasizing (always prone to the make believe too) that I had time traveled to the 1960s and I was John’s girlfriend.

So having the our girls’ trip coincidentally fall on December 8th was a big fucking deal to me. Mom and I split up from our family and headed to Central Park, to John’s memorial. Strawberry Fields on the 17th anniversary of his death was packed with fans paying tribute, singing songs, laying flowers on the Imagine plaque. I had nothing to offer, but I kneeled among the crowd and, with the rituals of my Catholic upbringing then still a part of my life, blessed myself and said a silent prayer. Here, among these strangers, I felt unabashed in showing what John and his music meant to me. Dare I say, I felt like I belonged. As I type this, I realize this may have been my introduction to what a music community can do.

Returning to school the next morning, to my daily homeroom harassment, my memory from the day before, of that brief but wonderful visit to Strawberry Fields, deflected the worst of his words. Unfortunately, those recollections of being surrounded by a community of people as moved by the music as I was, acted as the most fleeting of shields. My muscles clenching, my shame, my confidence’s insidious murder, reappeared the next day.

When I first became obsessed with The Beatles, I would hang out in the corner of the living room, next to the cabinet that held my parents’ albums and sort through the records, admiring the cover art. The brightly colored Some Girls, boldly adorned with headshots of wig wearing and lipsticked Rolling Stones. The illustrated band members of the Talking Heads hiding behind mounds and churches and holding up the world on the front of Little Creatures. The black and white simplicity of Double Fantasy, John and Yokoi sharing a closed mouth smooch. My eyes always lingered on this one, on the photo of the middle aged man taken just weeks before he was shot. At least he lived to be 40. I would think. He lived a long life.

I’ve traveled to New York dozens of times since that Strawberry Fields visit in 1997, but I haven’t been back to the Imagine plaque until this past weekend, three days shy of my 43rd birthday. Though my obsession for the Beatles (who I will always regard as my favorite) has long subsided, I thought about John on my 40th birthday. How I had reached the age he had died at. How I used to think of 40 as old. Present day 2025, and I’m three years over that hill.

Peter Pan syndrome for life, turning middle age has thrown me for a loop. I am struggling with aging. My knees that require cortisone shots every three months so I can continue to hike and dance and walk my dog. The wrinkles on my forehead and neck (WTF!). My loved ones dealing with illness. Dying. All these things suck, though, as my mother always reminds me, it is better than the alternative. And it does come with a plethora of positives, my favorite being the reflective wisdom that accompanies getting older. We evolve, not physically of course, but in how we view the world, other people, and ourselves. Troubled, flawed, and tragic genius that John was, I’d like to think how much he would have evolved, only he never got the chance.

Fortunately, for now, I get to.

I had a profound awakening just a few months ago. My Morning Jacket had just released Is and the band was in heavy promotion of their new album. Out for a long walk with Huey, I entertained myself by listening to a podcast Jim James had recently guested on. Impossible to discuss his music and lyrics without their connections to his mental health, James told the host that he, at the age of 46, finally and fully loves himself. His simple words stopped me in my tracks. I think poor Huey felt the recoil on his leash.

I had disliked myself, or at least parts of myself, for so long (since I was a teenager), that I never really considered what it would feel like to love myself. Even with my years of therapy, there was always something I desperately wanted to change. The size of my ass (of course). And my thighs. My clothes (way too bright and bold for the popular “preppie” style of my high school). I’d been called annoying by several peers. A crybaby. Too happy go lucky. Loud, outspoken, and impulsive, I tried to tame myself. Be a little more demure. Only speak when spoken to. This never worked, obviously. It’s not who I am.

Thankfully, as I’ve gotten older, lived in various places, and have met and befriended people from diverse cultures, my self image has matured. My body? I’m short and muscular. I can dance at a Phish show for hours, my thunder thighs get me up and down mountains, and I’m a natural when it comes to surfing (which I hope to pick up once I live on the beach). As for my nose, would I even be me without this gorgeous aquiline profile. I never want to change it.

I’m not annoying. I’m a firecracker: fierce, independent, and passionate. And being a crybaby should be a compliment. I have a lot of big emotions, love deeply, and am highly empathetic. Isn’t that sign of a high EQ? Too happy go lucky? No, I try to be as positive as possible, believing that such an attitude helps me derive the most joy I can out of this brief life. And those that bullied me? It’s pretty obvious to me now that we have completely different values (yeah, I see your social media posts).

In recent years (and this gets little off topic but stays on theme and would be remissive of me not to mention it) much of my self loathing is rooted in the shame for my own actions. You may have read Second Set Chances. I am definitely not proud of my conduct, both past, present, and future of what’s in those pages. Why did I say those awful things? Behave despicably? But we’re human. We all do shitty things, and are are constant works in progress; it’s what we learn from our actions and how we change as a result of them that matters most. I’d like to think my bullies, even that homeroom asshole, no longer get their kicks from tearing others down. Maybe, they even have remorse for their teenage antics.

So, as Jim James declared his love for himself, I, processing his words, had the same revelation wash through me. I finally, with no exception, love myself for all that I am and have been. This is such a new feeling that I don’t have the words to describe it yet, lengthy processor that I am. The day after my Strawberry Fields stopover, I seized the opportunity to write a letter to my younger self while in Washington Square Park. Without hesitation, I grabbed the clipboard from the display, sat on a nearby bench, and…nothing but a blank space where my mind should have been. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but couldn’t execute my articulation. I wrote words; I can’t say it was the version I’d submit to an editor. Maybe it’s because I fucked up and addressed it to sixteen-year-old Rachael instead of my fifteen-year-old version, though I don’t think either would recognize herself and how far she has come. I wonder if Jim shares these sentiments regarding a young James Olliges?

And there lies the beauty in aging.