2013

I guess I still haven’t figured out this concept of “time.”  Everything depends on it.  I think of my time well spent, time wasted and lost, times of happiness and times of sorrow, and regret.  This year hasn’t been easy by any means.  2012 has been by far the worst year I can remember in my life.  True not all was bad, but I lost someone for the first time.  And then eight short months later, another.  Husband and wife.  My grandpa and grandma.  I think of the time spent with them and think of how lucky we were to have them as grandparents.  We spent the weekend with her just two weeks before she died suddenly and went to see him when we heard of the cancer.  Time well spent.

I learned for the first time how hard it is to take your own advice you give to the stupid girls who let guys abuse them.  If you love someone, you will make excuse upon excuse to forgive them.  After the saliva to the face, he still drew me back in.  Waking up a morning after heavily drinking and fighting the night before, the bleeding scars on my arms should have been a wake-up call.  But still no.  I don’t think when he shoved me down the stadium’s steps is what did it.  It all hit me at once and I couldn’t do it anymore.  I can’t decide if this was a complete waste of the last two years of my life or if it was extreme lessons learned. Possibly time lost to find someone worthwhile. 

Now that this year is drawing to a close, I am truly relieved.  Time to celebrate and forget 2012 at this massive music festival in Dallas.  Music, especially the genre of Electronic Dance Music provided an escape from the hurt in life and what better way to kick of the New Year?  I think back for a second to the 1920s when “Jes Grew” as they labeled the outbreak of ragtime music as a plague that must be stopped emerged.  Why would people want to prevent others happiness and possibly their own?  It made no sense and this made me appreciate the time I was born.  Being a 90s baby, I’ve experienced more freedom with not only music, but religion, opportunity, etc. Not to mention this technology-inclined era.  This music incorporated and utilized so much of today’s technology; I couldn’t imagine growing up and having my younger years in any other era of time.  I’m glad the 20s made it through but thankful I didn’t come for another 70 years later.

 

Thankful to those who made the freedom of expression in music possible, it was time to let the passion fly and bring in 2013 with contentment and forgetting regrets.  It was time to let my scars heal.  Remembering those I love.  10 seconds left to midnight, the DJs shake the champagne bottles.  5, 4, 3, (everyone is screaming) 2, 1—and the champagne is sprayed in every direction, soaking us all in the promise of redemption that the New Year will bring. 

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Drowning It Out

Tuesdays.  I hate Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are staff meeting days.  Always swamped between the days of Sunday and Thursday— the meat of the stress Tuesday and Wednesday—I typically just head straight to the unit instead of going home first.  Hopefully I remember to pack some food so I don’t starve.

That room, the room we all wait in for the 6pm meetings to start, slowly fills up and as it does, it gets noisier and noisier by the second to where you’re about to punch somebody in the face if they talk to you.  Thank God when we remember to bring our headphones. 

Today was worse than usually.  Everyone seemed to be there and they all succeeded in being annoying.  Headphones.  I quickly hit whatever on my iTunes just needing something to drown out the distractions all around. 

Bob Marley with Manley and Seaga at Peace Concert
(One Love Peace Concert, Jamaica, 1978)

           Don’t worry about a thing,

‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright.

Singin, don’t worry about a thing,

‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright.

 

Thanks Bob.  How can I not freaking worry when nobody will shut up and I have a million things to do?!

 But almost unconsciously I started to, well, not worry as much.  Bob Marley was successfully drowning out the voices around me; however, it brought me back to the first car ride I took with my mom and sisters to Florida State.  We were going to orientation while I was still in my last year of high school.  I was nervous as shit. 

Jax to Tallahassee

Everyone always tells you to ‘not be nervous’ and that “everything will be fine!”  Do these cliché statements ever really help ease the nerves?  No.  But “Three Little Birds” did.

It came on a random radio station while driving down I-10 and we sat in silence for a few seconds.  My littlest sister with the biggest personality began to sing along to Bob’s words and one by one we were all until the end when we started laughing and singing everything that came on the radio together therein after. 

There is one good thing about music.  It does in whatever situation, unite us.

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