It's been a year since I wrote the conclusion. I find myself needing to end with something that more accurately depicted the emotional strain that writing this book exerted on me than the song, “Its Times Like These.” The problem with ending with “learning to love again,” as the Foo Fighters’ song suggests, is that “love” is an emotion that I haven’t mastered. Through therapy (that I finally re-started once I had written the conclusion), it is my first real go at the process of learning what it actually means to feel, generally, and to feel love, specifically. Thus, telling myself to “learn to love again” was not really helping me improve since I am still trying “to learn what love is.” I know how love feels to me but what I feel is quite different from what others feel. These paradoxical situations I refer to as my “emotional conundrums.”

One of my goals for therapy is to try to learn to feel in the moment. As I’ve described several times in this book, there is a “taped-delay” with regard to my ability to access emotions. The emotions get sent to what had been a nearly impenetrable emotional vault. What I perceive myself as wanting to do in therapy is to slowly open the door to the vault so that I can: (i) feel the emotion in real time or close to real time; and (ii) release the emotional pressure that has built up for over 50 years. My current state of mind is akin to that of a young turtle that ventures out of its shell only to return after encountering, or simply sensing, something dangerous. I feel an unpleasant emotion, the door to the vault shuts, the little bit of progress I made is lost, and the emotional pressure begins to build again.

I was so frustrated I started listening to Metallica and Rage Against the Machine for weeks on end. Ending a book about hope and gratitude with a description of how I found myself clinging to “anger” and “rage” would not be a very poetic ending, but it’s the truth.

Metallica has been with me since 1984 when I was a Junior in High School. That is an awfully long time (30+ years), and they recently released what I would categorize as a killer album in the form of Hardwired to Self-Destruct. It was only as I wrote this book and simultaneously underwent therapy that it became clear how important Metallica was to my whole process. As I have begun to open the vault of pent up emotions that my brain created, the emotions that have come to the forefront demanding attention are anger and frustration. One reason for this is the fact that “writing this story of my life in a fun way” ended up being NOT so fun after all. Por que? Then there’s the frustration of having to navigate emotions in my emotional vault that I can’t associate with my past directly. Why is it that I get this unique opportunity? In the book, I’ve delved into the “why’s” but it is still no less frustrating even if I do understand the “why’s” more than when I started writing.

On the topic of anger, I could relate to Metallica because of the long-standing relationship I had with them. Even though I highlight The Black Album in the chapter on music that “hits you like a ton of bricks,” it’s actually, St. Anger, that is my favorite and that packs the bigger punch. So, why the subterfuge? Well, this was a book I wrote for my kids so I didn’t want them to think St. Anger might define me in some way. As it turns out, St. Anger actually defines me better than any other album I reference in this entire book. If you know the subject matter and intensity of the songs on this album, then this is kind of an embarrassing thing to admit. Certainly, this is something you don’t want to admit to your kids.

Before getting into the songs on St. Anger, I’ll share a quick excerpt from one of the televisions series I’ve been watching for a while, Vikings. The main character for the first four seasons was Ragnar Lothbrok. What a great name and what a great character! If my son, Joseph, had not yet been born, then he might have been named Ragnar Lothbrok Alvarez. At least, the idea would have been floated. One of Ragnar’s sons was named Ivar, and he is quite hot blooded. Ragnar is still alive in the series at the time I am writing this. In Episode 5 of the 2nd part of Season 4, Ivar tells Ragnar that he wished he wasn’t so angry all of the time. It might have been the first time I sympathized with the character. Ragnar essentially tells Ivar to be true to himself and not deny his feelings but to try to channel them. He tells Ivar that without his anger he would be nothing. As I continue to talk about my anger, please know that what’s important is not to deny it but to understand and harness it so that we can do good and not harm in this life.

Just like for the songs from the bands U2 and Rush, all of the songs I have selected as my favorites for Metallica were recorded long after I decided to follow this rock group. Two of the songs are from the album, Load (1996), and three are from the album, St. Anger (2003). For those who wrote me off as someone who only likes the Metallica albums of my youth, then here’s mud in your eye.

Five Favorites from Metallica (on Spotify as part of "Metallic Rage - Raging Metal" play list)

“Bleeding Me” (Load-1996)

“The Outlaw Torn” (Load-1996)

“St. Anger” (St. Anger-2003)

“The Unnamed Feeling” (St. Anger-2003)

“All Within My Hands” (St. Anger-2003)

This is an unlikely list. None of these songs receive air play and never will since they are all longer than seven minutes in length. Combined, the five songs are about 45 minutes worth of music. Even if I didn’t want to disclose that St. Anger was my favorite Metallica album, then I most certainly could disclose this list…right? I could have except for the very last song on this list which also happens to be the very last song on the album, St. Anger. It is a song that conveys that what we need to overcome our personal demons is “within our hands.” However, in describing the unsavory things we want to “kill” within ourselves, it also outlines how difficult it is for us to actually exorcize those demons. The song ends with Hetfield, Metallica’s singer, repeating and ultimately yelling the word “kill” upwards of 36 times. To me, this is where the danger lies with this song, why I didn’t want to mention this song, and why I wanted to avoid the album, St. Anger, altogether. That is how intense this song is. Since one of the tenets of rock ‘n roll that I uncovered is “to not be fake,” I had to come clean.

If you ever decide to listen to this song (and this might be the only song that I would advise you NOT to listen to of all of the songs I list in my rock ‘n roll journal), then just remember this song represents a command to the self to kill the destructive thoughts or feelings that surface when the right triggers are pulled. The song is about destroying that which is destructive within us. But when the “kill-kill-kill” mantra kicks in, it’s so intense that you forget what the song is about. It’s so easy to feel like the song is asking you to kill something that is tangible and not something that is inside your head. As I have described at different points in this book, there are times where I use intense songs such as this to send a message to my brain to stop making me feel things I don’t want to feel. When my emotional vault flings open, then I want to “kill” whatever comes out of there. The “kill-kill-kill” mantra, as delivered by Hetfield, is spot-on how it would feel when I would have an emotional “overload.”

Visually, the “kill-kill-kill” mantra looks like what is displayed on the cover of Metallica’s album, Hardwired to Self-Destruct. The song, “All Within My Hands,” and the album Hardwired to Self-Destruct are 13 years apart, but somehow the “kill-kill-kill” mantra from the song and the image from album cover are forever married in my mind.

I reiterate that “All Within My Hands” is about controlling the thoughts and inclinations that we have and not focusing on external factors that we may want to blame for the way that we think and feel. It IS within our power to assume control! As the tone of the song suggests, it is a process that is difficult and challenging, but the end result brings more peace and joy to your life than you could have ever imagined.