Tonight I am staying awake, and I definitely shouldn’t be. I have a flight out of Indiana at 6am tomorrow morning. This break has left me with a lot of time to think about…stuff. Being home so much for the first time in probably 6 years has got me thinking about how different I am from when I was 18. Getting more mature is a good thing in my opininion. Of course, along with getting more mature, I have gotten much less optimistic. It is important to note that when I was 18 I thought I had the world in the palm of my hand.
I was graduating from a small town high school, and I was ready to take on the world. I was in a promising band, and I was 1000% positive that my band was going to get a record deal. I left for college because my parents made me enroll, but my life was music.
That band carried me all the way through last year with incresing promise each day. This isn’t really something I talk about much – or let myself think about because of how it all ended. At the height of the music part of my life, my band was playing Warped Tour, and had just recorded a demo that was getting ready to be shopped in LA to record labels. The dream that I had held onto since I was a child – of becoming something - I thought, was about to finally happen.
It was like life had built up to the point of exploding, and all of the nights I imagined being on a national tour and playing to sold out shows were starting to become realized. The trouble was, we were breaking apart from the inside. Our drummer was an alcoholic by the time he hit 18, and playing shows was impossible without him getting wasted. He was drinking to hide problems, which always errupted in fights with us and members of other bands once he was drunk. The four of us hated eachother most of the time. We fought constantly. For a million reasons that would take too long to explain. Long story short, by the time we were 6 months out of recording, we were completely finished. Funny, how I tried for something so long and so hard, and right before we had it….we threw in the towel. That CD is still in boxes in my house. I could probably still get it shopped, but while there is a CD with incredible promise, there isn’t a band anymore.
Losing “the band,” which I keep out of my mind as much as possible, can only be compared to losing a loved one. It wasn’t just that I lost the band a year ago, I lost ME. The only me I had ever known. The shy person who couldn’t talk in public, could talk on stage, and play guitar, and sing. Sitting at home tonight I am missing the stage, the shows where people showed up, and the shows where no one did. The traveling in the sterotypical “band van” to other states. The magic of getting asked for an autograph by kids who were dying to be able to say “I knew you when…” When we had good times, they were perfect. We were what we had seen in the movies. We were the band that was about to make it.
I am thinking that life has worn me out. I was SURE things were going to work out, and even though I know that there would have been even more problems if we would have continued, I sometimes still wonder “what if?” What if we had kept together. If we had gotten a deal. Maybe tonight I would be unhappy, but accomplished. So, which is more important? My life is happy now, but not accomplished. I gave up on the dream. While I know it was the healthiest thing to do – quitting the band – I will never forgive myself for it.
Through this weight loss journey, I am feeling much more. I am thinking for the first time in over a year. I am remembering. I am, hopefully, learning.
So what do I make of all of this? I guess I am a person who quits before I know how it all ends. I am a person who regrets…always. I was a person who believed the impossible could happen. No – I was a person who knew the impossible would happen.
So what happens to the person who knew it would happen…when it doesn’t? I guess I just never could have guessed a person’s worst fear could come true. See, when I was 18 I didn’t believe the world could be that cruel. I didn’t believe my life had anything but positive things to offer.
What I have learned through the mess and joys of the last 6 years is that it’s okay to dream big. You just have to be prepared for when the dream doesn’t happen. Maybe this is a better way to put it: If you don’t dream as big as you can, you may never know what you’re capable of. What I was capable of was having a dream that was almost impossible, nearly getting it, and then having it crash down. I am a person who is still here today after it all happened, and a person who has the courage to face it all head on.
The biggest lesson is that I will not let what happened then determine what happens next. Maybe that one lifelong wish didn’t pan out how I though it would, but I have a million more hairbrained dreams that I am going to go for head on until I am done on this earth. Who knows when I will surprise myself.
Sarah: it’s okay to dream, and it’s okay to fail.
Hooray for holiday in Florida!
So, unfortunately, I cannot post my usual weigh-in results, because there is no scale at my mother’s house. Why don’t I go out and buy one? Well, that’s because I am completely broke from Christmas shopping and being a college student.
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= AWESOME