[Intro]
(piano, slow build)
Yeah…
[Verse 1]
Fourteen years old they said pack up your life
Left everything I knew in a single night
No say in the matter, no vote, no choice
Just a kid who lost his home and his voice
Wanted my dad but he was back in the hills
Wisconsin was a sentence I was forced to fill
Walked into that school like a ghost in the hall
Fourteen hundred strangers and I knew none of them at all
[Hook]
But Chris was there
First one who actually saw me for real
Not the country kid, not the outsider
Just saw what I was trying to conceal
That’s the thing about one person showing up
Sometimes one is enough
[Verse 2]
Mom and I went to war almost every night
No man in the house to tell me wrong from right
I wasn’t bad I was just angry at the wrong address
Taking out on her what I never could express
Wanted West Virginia got Wisconsin instead
Wanted my dad got a suburb in his stead
I know I was the problem plenty of those days
But I was sixteen with nowhere to put the rage
[Bridge]
(stripped back)
Wrestling kept me grounded
Something about that mat
Made the noise go quiet
Made me feel like I had something back
Then the season ended
And I didn’t have that anymore
And the walls came in
And I walked out the door
[Chorus]
She said get out
I grabbed what I could find
Seventeen years old
Left with what was mine
Couches, part-time jobs, still showing up to class
Until the day I didn’t
Until I let it pass
Dropped out, eight months of barely keeping air
Colorado called and I answered
Because I needed out of there
[Verse 3]
Didn’t have a plan just had a direction
Sometimes that’s the only form of self-protection
West to Colorado, friend beside me in the car
Didn’t know what I was building
Just knew I couldn’t stay where we are
Started over in the mountains with nothing but my name
Every hard thing that came after I handled just the same
You figure it out or you don’t
You keep going or you stop
Nobody was coming to save me
So I climbed up from the bottom of that drop
[Chorus]
She said get out
I grabbed what I could find
Seventeen years old
Left with what was mine
Couches, part-time jobs, still showing up to class
Until the day I didn’t
Until I let it pass
Dropped out, eight months of barely keeping air
Colorado called and I answered
Because I needed out of there
[Final Bridge]
Chris still picks up the phone
Fifteen years later, still the same
The one constant in a story full of exits
The one who never treated me like I was strange
Some people get a village
I got one
But one was real
And that’s more than most
[Outro]
I don’t blame her now
I was hard, I was angry
I was a kid who didn’t know
How to carry what I was carrying
Without dropping it on someone
She was just the closest one
Colorado didn’t save me
I saved myself
It’s hard to tell the difference
When you’re the only one
Who showed up for you
