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Weezer's first CD was released in 1994. I wasn't that interested when it came out, but gave it a few listens at the insistance of my boss' son. It was good. Enjoyable. It wasn't one of those change-my-life albums. At least, not at that point.

In the late summer of 1994, I moved into my first roommate-less apartment. It was in the basement of a little red brick bungalow across the street from the University of Missouri, where I was a junior. I had an internship at the university's video production studio two blocks from my apartment, and I spent most of my time working as a girl-Friday for a family that owned hotels.

I had always been a loner. Ever since I was a kid I had preferred my own company to anyone elses. It's one of the primary symtoms of Only Child Syndrome. My first three years of college required roommates, though. Mostly for financial reasons, but also for social reasons because I know I was probably at risk of becoming that weird loner chick who grows her hair over her face so she doesn't have to make eye contact with anyone, and who somehow manages to live in the dorms unnoticed for years after she's finished school, just so she doesn't have to face the real world.

The time with roommates was okay, but I was thrilled to find myself in a position at age 21 where I could swing my own little apartment where the only unwashed person I'd have to smell would be me. My aparntment was perfect - $275 a month, paid to a kindly retired journalist and her physics professor husband. The walk-out basement location provided a great deal of privacy. While there were four apartments in the house, only one bordered mine - the upstairs unit that would eventually house my friends Mary and Bob. That first year, it was inhabited by a couple whose names I never learned. They never complained about my loud music. I never complained about them moving furniture every night in the wee hours.

That apartment was the place where I had my first pet - my old lady cat Whiney who passed away at age 17 last winter. It's the place where I lost my virginity, and where I received my first paycheck from my first "real" job-with-benefits. It's where I lived when I got my tattoo, and where I once drank so much tequilla with Big Daddy B. that my cat feared me for days after. It was the place where I would wistfully stop whatever I was doing when my hot next-door-neighbor would ride his bike down the slope of the driveway, and where I would go into an anti-social stupor whenever he's smile, say hi and invite me over for a beer on his little patio. I wrote enough short fiction in that apartment that, if I stacked it up and spackled it, I would have had a nice little garage to accompany my little apartment. That apartment is where My Slutty Years took place, along with My Drinking Years and My Not-Paying-the-Bills Years.

But my main memory of that apartment is sitting on the beige carpet in my living room beside my stereo for hours on end, every single day, getting myself lost in music. Sometimes I'd sing along. Most of the time I would just sit on the floor, cross-legged, rocking back and forth on my fists. My knuckles were always a little calloused because I spent so much time subconciously resting on them during these music marathons. I listened to everything, and not one band stands out as a favorite. It was a melange of The Replacements, REM (especially Monster), Hole, Nirvana, Babes in Toyland, L7, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Elvis Costello, Green Day, Tori Amos, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Van Morrison and yes, Weezer's blue album, briefly. While it didn't touch me the way many of the other albums did, "Buddy Holly" never ceased to get my ass off that carpet and on my feet. In a year of listening to songs that were either angry or morose, "Buddy Holly" managed to have the right amount of outsider angst, coupled with an energy that I desperately needed in that basement.

All told, by 1994 I was grown enough to realize that my life wasn't going to fall into place as I'd always imagined. Those dreams of coasting through college with good grades, accolades, wonderful friends, boyfriends wasn't going to happen. It was a realization accompanied by a fair deal of bitterness and anger, but tempered with the notion that things will work out, somehow.

Weezer released Pinkerton at the end of 1996, and it barely clicked with me. I remember hearing "The Good Life" a few times, but otherwise, I totally missed it. I missed a lot at that point in my life. While 1994 was a year of exhilarating new-found freedom, 1996 was the year of paying for it. I had my first real, adult relationship that ended badly. It was preceded and followed by a string of fleeting encounters with guys who were not good for me in any way, shape or form. Friendships were flaky, at best. The few friends I made in college were long gone, and my oldest friendship was in the process of exploding in an ugly, ugly manner. My first "real" job was turning out to be a disappointment. I was unfulfilled, broke, and exhausted from long hours of dealing with a pointy-haired boss.

During Friday's show, it occured to me that it's a shame I didn't latch onto Pinkerton when it was released, because "Tired of Sex", "Why Bother?" and "El Scorcho" pretty much sum up that year in my life. By then I was pretty much exhausted with playing all the games: of love, of sex, of career, of friendship. I knew everything I was doing was wrong, but I had no clue how to do right. I was diappointed in myself and disappointed in everyone who became entangled in my life.

Of course, things changed, and it's all distant memory now. In fact, so distant that I'm finding the bad parts harder and harder to recall. When I think back on that period in the mid-1990s, my first thoughts go to that delicious independence, the time I spent getting to know myself. The crazy shit that, while often perilous and stupid, gave me a backlog of memories that I mostly look back on with fondness, now that I have seen first-hand that even my worst mistakes didn't ruin my life. Even most of the stuff that wound up hurting me, I'm glad I experienced.

The acute lonliness of that time doesn't come to mind unless I specifically summon its ghost. Instead, I remember being alone, and the time I spent writing, reading and sitting on the floor with my music. That, I often miss in these days when my attention is split between my daughter, my husband, and maintaining our lives.

Friday's concert found me in a very different place. For the most part I've gotten the hang of this adulthood business. Married, parent, homeowner, quasi-business-owner. But the emotions are still there - the lonliness, frustration, disappointment.

These days I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my time thinking about really big things. I've developed a bit of an obsession with questioning my purpose in this world, as well as everyone else's purpose. If you ask yourself often enough, "Why are we here?", you'll make yourself crazy. Really crazy. I've always somewhat believed that the answer to that question lies in the things we love, the things that give us joy and peace. Sitting on the floor, lost in my music has always provided that. But then what? What good does that provide to the world?

At the concert, as with most concerts I attend these days, I found myself feeling old. The people my age at shows are becoming fewer and fewer. I sat next to a girl in a Nirvana t-shirt, and all through the night I fought the urge to ask her how old she was when Nevermind was released. I was a month shy of 19 when it came out fourteen years ago. I'm assuming that she hadn't even started school then. With moments like this becoming so commonplace for me, I have to ask myself yet another unanswerable question: why am I still finding so much joy in concerts while so many of my compatriots have moved on? Did they simply outgrow their connections to music and find deeper connections elsewhere, or is it something they regretfully lost along the way? Or am I just a weirdo who refuses to grow up?

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter why I still love going to shows, just like it doesn't matter why I'm here. What matters is, when the band played Friday night, the melancholy lyrics and the frustrated, angry swell of percussion and feedback touched the place barely contained under the surface of my skin, that place that still holds my fear, my lonliness, my joy, my love. I spent the night on my feet, jumping, dancing, screaming, letting out a week of sleepless nights and cranky toddler. Letting ing out a month of a lost job, paying bills, and marital frustration. Letting out an adulthood of questioning and second-guessing myself. I lost myself in the crowd and in the music, let go of the notions of how a nearly 33-year-old wife and mother should act and just did what felt right.

The band ended the show, as they do most shows, with "Surf Wax America", a song I've embraced since making the decision several years ago to drop out of the rat race.

I'm goin' surfin cuz I don't like your face
I'm bailin' out because I hate the race
of rats that run round and round in the maze

You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you run out of fuel
I'm still afloat

As I stomped and jumped and screamed the lyrics, I realized that this is enough. Being filled with joy, even fleetingly, is enough. That energy, that emotion - that's what keeps this world afloat. Even when that energy comes from something as silly as a pop song - heard live or while sitting on the dirty floor of a $275 a month apartment - it's enough.