If you follow my Twitter page (or see the posts to your right here on my page), you’ll see that I posted this link yesterday about pop/punk/emo/whatever you’d like to classify them albums turning 10 this year.  10 years ago, I was 18/19 and this music was one of the most important things to me at the time.  Back then, I was trying to make the transition from schoolkid to real adult, and it was really a hard time for me.  See, I went to college for a semester and it was very rough.  I graduated early from high school, and I had really hoped to make some new friends, since that’s the big thing you hear about college: you’ll make some of the best friends of your life there.  That, unfortunately, did not happen for me.  I had a really tough time of it, mostly because I was at a school I was not happy attending.  I hadn’t gotten into my first (and honestly, only) choice school, and instead of working for a semester and reapplying to other schools I could have been happy at, my mom insisted I go to one that was notoriously a party place.

Now, I’m not a partier at all — I prefer to keep to myself and just go out to events that appeal to me.  As a result, on a party school campus, there’s not a lot for a girl like me.  My first roommate was horrible to me, and my second one was great, but she and I had completely opposite lives as she was a junior and I was a freshman.  I know I was lonely a lot, and I spent all my time on my computer, chatting to all of my online friends in their different locations all over the world.  Back then was when the bands I was into were still small and close with their fanbases, and it wasn’t uncommon for me to spend my nights chatting on AIM to these various musicians.  I’ve seen a good few of my friends from back then blowing up in huge ways, and I regret that most of them and I aren’t nearly as close as we once were.  There are a couple of bands on that list that I actually consider friends, even though I haven’t had a face to face conversation with them in years.

I spent last night listening to one of the albums from that list that I find to be one of the most perfect of that era: it’s Volcano by Gatsbys American Dream.  Gatsbys created an entire album around the central theme of human emotions being like a volcano (namely, Pompeii), and there is not a single bad song on that record.  As I listened to these familiar songs that I’ve still listened to often over the past decade, I found my mind racing back ten years and all of those memories flooding over me.  I felt the same pain my 18 year old self felt realizing that I was so out of my league at that school, and I felt the same joy that I felt being in the middle of a crowd and singing along to the songs that truly rescued me from myself back in those days.  After Volcano ended and after the various Gatsbys songs I played after had also closed out, I went into my current writing project and banged out almost 4,000 words.  Today, I’ve got another album on: A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic! at the Disco.  I actually attended quite a few Panic! shows over the years, including their first-ever show in Chicago (a place that I called my second home for many, many years with one of my best friends and her amazing family).  Once again, these memories are rushing over me and I find it’s hard to keep from tearing up as I remember how these musicians and the friends I had in those days really kept me together when I really could have lost everything.

I am truly, truly indebted and thankful to these musicians who helped shape my life into what it is now.  Although I may not get to talk to these friends, both musicians and the actual friends who kept me sane back in the mid-2000’s, I owe the fact that now, in 2015, I’m chasing my dreams to watching them chase and achieve theirs.  So go ahead: check out that list and pick your favorite album (mine are, obviously, Volcano, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, and also From Under the Cork Tree) and remember who you were a decade ago.  It may be happy memories, sad memories, or a combination of both, but you’re stronger now for who you were back then.  I know I had a tough time of it sometimes, but I wouldn’t change a single thing.

Until next time,
Kate