Years Spent, And Not A Moment Lost Lyrics

A friend whispered past his drink, I heard the words

"We all grew up here" and I felt it in my chest like thunder

Understand that he did not mean "growing up" as "growing older"

The days are numbered small and it makes the rain seem so much colder

Makes it so hard to remember that he was not speaking of the passing of time

Because some of us only learned how to wait

While others learned how not to hate themselves

That if we use each other's hands to ease each other's pain

Then a living Hell can be a Hell of a place

We started a fire but if we can stare into the glow of the embers

We'll remember that fire fades

New things grow, and more often than not that means escape

Move on and forget the stench of youth

The stain of feigned innocence we wore like a badge of honor and truth

The times we beat our brothers half to death

Because we thought we were supposed to

Only to laugh about it later and ignore all the growing up we had to do

But I'm not ready

Not ready to face it all on unfamiliar ground

The flames we built from nothing are fading faster

More like a funeral pyre for the quiet kids who learned how to speak loud

Now I'm racing against the last few weeks just to write it all down

To tell anyone and everyone that somehow, we found one another

Following countless invisible lines like string on a madman's map

Searching for some greater truth or secret

Drawn across distances rivaling oceans and by the strength of our backs

We collided like glass planets, like drunk drivers, certain no one would miss us

Yet as we crashed and did our best to imitate the way that thunder claps

The way that windows shatter

Broken boys and girls found a warmer place to rest

That madman's point of origin was our destination

Our home-base, hovel of a headquarters

A good head to keep above our freshly wounded shoulders

We picked up our ugly little pieces and put them back in place as best we could

Not realizing that we were working with the hands of children

No one to tell us to wait a few years

That the strong fingers of soldiers and survivors know how to mend souls

In our ignorance of proper placement

We never quite patched all the holes, but found we had built a home

And every tired old board would find its time to bend and groan

We were the things that went bump in the dark

Celebrating that we still had some skin on our bones

And those hellish skeleton screams that kept the neighbors up at night

Were only friendly fire-fights

Subtly discussing the finer points of what we would never miss about being alone

Doing everything but caring

That some of us wouldn't even make it out without giving up the ghost

That maybe all we had left was Hope

These boys of summer and the girls we loved

We waged a war in raw throats and untimely sunrises

Trying our best to bury the end of our rope

A place where we found living proof of Nowhere

A place where we called Silence out by name

Where we choked on bitter smoke

And forced ourselves to go insane and fall in Love

For when we spoke aloud we found that they were very much the same

And so we're letting go

But never going away

Retelling our story without a single missing page

Break down every year into months and every month into days

To never forget the smell of Summers wasted or the way that the Music played

Over our cries as we dug our brothers graves

Creating Harmonies much sweeter than the ones we tried to make

We'll never forget that anything can be a Song if enough of us are singing

Never forget the Strangers who knew us best

We found the true worth of our memories

Because we'll never forget the cost, of years spent, and not a moment lost