A Man of My Own Verse 1 Mama said you had a brilliant mind I believed her for a while I remember you at baseball games And the way you’d make me smile Then the house went up for sale And you went somewhere I couldn’t go At sixteen I called it freedom All the things you let me know Verse 2 By eighteen I was looking back At things I thought were fine I was learning what a father was And questioning the one I’d known Then I spent a lot of years Making sure I’d never be The kind of man who’d walk away From his own responsibility Chorus I spent my younger years becoming Everything you weren’t to me Thought that meant I made my own way Thought that meant that I was free But you don’t have to follow footsteps To let somebody choose your road I was running from your shadow Long after I’d been on my own Verse 3 Ten years went without a word Then your name lit up my phone You still had a hundred reasons Why your troubles weren’t your own I took my time to answer Things I’d wanted you to hear You said you finally understood What I’d been saying all those years Verse 4 Then one day there weren’t more days For you to figure something out And all the things you’d left unfinished Weren’t getting finished now I ran until the road went blurry Crying hard and breathing cold Wasn’t wishing you were coming back Just feeling something I couldn’t hold Chorus I spent my younger years becoming Everything you weren’t to me Thought that meant I made my own way Thought that meant that I was free But there’s a difference in the running And choosing where you want to go You can spend a life avoiding someone And never walk a road of your own Bridge You were comfortable in your skin I keep trying to grow in mine I used to envy how you did that Though I couldn’t understand why Now I don’t need to be your opposite Don’t need you to be wrong To know the kind of man I want Or the road that I belong on Outro I was thirty-three and running Like I had somewhere to be Then I walked back home that evening With a little more of me I ain’t the man you were Or the one you couldn’t be For the first time, I’m just me.
