I realized on January 5th that I'd rather be stuck in a bus station than an airport. The reasoning was simply feeling like I was able to leave at my own discretion. Yet, I sat amongst others waiting for three hours, and not once left. We were scheduled to leave at 7 am and didn't leave until 10. When we finally boarded a bus that was not originally ours, the daylight sat in my eyes like I hadn't seen the sun in days. As we entered the Richmond Greyhound Bus Station, the sun hadn't yet started the process of rising. It was a crisp cold, complimenting the dark, and the snow crunched under our feet as we walked to the front doors.
Upon bracing the cold once again to climb on the bus, I hadn't considered the temperature until later, when I had to actively think of how cold the ground was for there to still be snow on it. We glided up 95, passing cars similar to how we rode. Going somewhere, anywhere, in our salt spray covered vehicles, happy to be out on the road. The day previous, I wasn't understanding the possibility of why this trip wouldn't happen. As a record-breaking snowfall dumped on the whole of Manhattan, and the coast of the East Coast, to be honest, it sat sunny and 20 something at home. The "Bomb Cyclone" didn't touch inland, therefore I really had no trouble getting on the road and starting my trek. Nothing bugged me about the drive from my house to RVA, except the wind, and the truck I got stuck behind, of which I failed to realize until we got to the stoplight that has created many a fender bender, that he had no brake lights.
We weren't even out of Virginia yet when I checked the weather in New York. Although having hours to go, I wanted to be prepared, you know? "9 degrees," I thought. Bitter, but I had layers. Fine, I figured, until I looked at the wind chill. "Feels like -10." All I could hear in my head was my dad saying "did you know the average temperature on Mars is -19?" So the temperature wasn't quite "out of this world" yet, but I would imagine nothing short of unbearable.
The switching of buses was slow to progress, but fast to execute. One second we're standing in a customer service line in Baltimore Downtown, the next we're in line to get on a bus to New York. We left at 1:47, with every bus seat overfilled. The man I sat next to took the opportunity to take his entire seat and a fourth of mine. I sat and continued to read, minding my own business. We stopped at a rest stop in Delaware, to add insult to injury. Two and a half hours left. Thankfully, they flew by. I'm not sure how, nor why, but I thank the powers above for allowing me to be distracted enough to miss 3 hours of my life. We made it to Port Authority in NYC and powered through the gray snow covering the curbs to make it to our hotel. Change clothes. Charge phones. Then out again.
Set aside the fact that I was wearing nothing but a bodysuit, thin jeans, two pairs of socks, and boots who have seen many shows, stepped on many floors, and seen many better days. Paired with a heavy jean jacket and an athletic scarf, I was okay walking to the venue. We trudged under awnings with snow falling from them still. The wind blew just enough for the dust to be pushed off the roofs and fall to the ground, glistening in street lights and off building signs, like someone had just thrown the finest and sparkly glitter flakes you've ever seen. The wind was brutal. The cold was almost unbearable. I didn't once take into consideration where I was. Like I hadn't been eager to see New York in the winter for the past few years. Like it wasn't a special occasion. It was just another place I was in to see another band I liked.
On the way to and from New York, I got lost in the words of Joan Didion. From her book "The Year of Magical Thinking" comes the line "the way you got sideswiped was by going back." The book focuses on emotions and the fluid process (or lack thereof) of humans grieving and her experiences in losing her loved ones. It not at all resonates with my current state, aside from the conversation about what "going back" does to your emotions and being in a state of grief, or whatever said emotion may be, I suppose. However, that line, "the way you got sideswiped was by going back" flew out of my head and into the air of the Gramercy Theatre, and I finally understood why my ability to emote had erupted. One prominent moment, in particular, was during a song I hadn't listened to in years prior to this week. It was a song I associated with two of my best friends at the time, and there I was, at the Gramercy in New York City, co-existing with these former friends in the same venue, although not speaking or associating with them, nor them with one another, during this song that, for so long, held such a significant place in our hearts. And it was fine until it wasn't.
I was wading in a sea of people I once knew very well, perhaps even called friends, listening to the band that brought us all together. While existing solely in this company, my head turned off. For the first time in I don't know how long, I was able to exist without actively having to partake in such an act. I stared at the lead singers face, one of pure joy. One I had never seen in the now 15+ shows I've been to theirs in almost 6 years. I realized that it meant just as much to them as it meant to us, and I got a flutter in my chest. The one I only get once or twice before or during Christmas. And then I started to think of the opportunities and the conversations and the memories and the paths to new friendships and new music that this one group of six men from Vermillion, South Dakota swiftly slid me into. I felt so many emotions at once, I'm almost sure I didn't feel them at all.
It seemed as though all of the car rides, ticket stubs, dead camera batteries, and losses of potentially hundreds of dollars at this point, all led to this moment. And if that's the last time I ever see Paradise Fears live, I'm okay with it. I'd love to see them again, obviously, but there was a lack of issue and the push of simply being, and that was more than I could ask for on a frigid January night. I sat awake until 3:30 contemplating these thoughts. Running through every concept and construction of words I could have possibly come up with felt redundant. I made no headway. I sat on my twin sized bed, while the room was asleep and the rest of the world was not, and could think nothing else than "I'm freezing cold, but I'm so fucking happy."
My intent for the bus ride home was to continue on writing bits and pieces of whatever this may turn into, and I ended up doing the opposite. I'd read a page or two of The Year of Magical Thinking, my eyes would start to shake, and I'd fall asleep. By the afternoon, the persistency of my nausea had subsided. I only continued to snack on crackers. I fell asleep again and opened my eyes in RVA at 4:30. We had dinner, I started feeling nauseous again, and drove home. I woke this morning with a pounding headache that radiated down my neck, unable to fully open my eyes. I slowly let myself get up, grab my book to finish, and crawl back under the covers. It is a tactic of self-care I have to allow myself to do, or I'll deem it as unnecessary and go find something "more important" to do. This moment is relatively important.
Pieces of Joan Didion's mind continued to resonate with the weekend. Maybe they were blanket statements; just generic enough to bear some resemblance. I still held onto them. "We have to assume the worst so any improvement will seem better" comes from page 210. I can hear Angela saying "that's very pessimistic," as we continued to sit in the cold metal seats of the Richmond Greyhound Station. That was the only way I could reason any of what was happening, but I said it with far less grace. "I cannot let myself get excited about things," I whispered to Ali around 9 o'clock, "because then this happens, and I end up disappointed. It happens every time. So, as far as I'm concerned, we're not going to this show tonight. If we do make it, I'll be pleasantly surprised. I'll be excited once I'm standing in the middle of the Gramercy." Ali said "that's pessimistic, but that's the way you are," and I slid back into my seat, shifting my attention, once again, to my phone. It is strange, and maybe a little ironic, that I didn't finish the book in the midst of all of the mess. I found that line at the end of the book, at the end of it all, laying in my bed, after coming home a day early. It makes me feel less shitty for going through life thinking this way.
"The entire point slipping into the sea around us was the kind of conclusion I anticipated. I did not anticipate cardiac arrest at the dinner table." I find myself in this particular spiral of thinking regularly. I've got the wildest imagination when it comes to the things I want, and a lot of times I think through so many different scenarios (some may call this "overthinking") at a time, given the situation, that by the time any of it happens, I've already come to terms with the idea of it happening. What I didn't anticipate of this weekend was not thinking about work once. What I didn't anticipate happening was waking up this morning, to hear my watch ticking next to me, but seemingly at a slower pace than it did on Wednesday night. What I didn't anticipate of this weekend was ending up in a bar on 23rd street with one of my favorite bands, and some of the people I originally knew or was friends with, when I first started listening to this band. When I've explained the situation to anyone, I've used the terms "the band and a lot of the OG fans."
I couldn't have anticipated coming out of this weekend having less of an idea of where to go from here, while simultaneously seeing everything through a clearer screen. For a year, this weekend has seemed like it carried some sort of magic, somewhere in my 17-year-old self's eyes. At 17, I didn't anticipate Paradise Fears reaching a point of doing 3 only shows a year. Being in college. Writing books. Solving world issues. I'm now the age they were when I didn't consider my anticipation for anything they were doing, as if it was any of my business in the first place. I remember looking at Jordan Merrigan's face while he was on stage Friday night and thinking about some of the first conversations I ever had with him. Then cringing. Then appreciating that although he had those cringey conversations with me at 17, he'd probably be willing to have real, non-cringey conversations with me at almost 23, if I could manage to speak through how cold my face is. Simply thinking about that, I was overcome with emotion.
I lived this weekend like my teenage self, in someone else's dream. Snow came cascading off the tops of New York's buildings left and right, and the wind blew so cold and so abruptly into my face, I wanted to sit down and stop walking. I stopped pushing for this to happen and let natural courses interfere, for a better outcome than I could have anticipated. And although Paradise Fears may not be a consistent being in my life anymore, I'm able to let 6 of them individually remain as constants and be just as happy. Where I've begun to grow into this new version of myself I love, I was worried I'd involuntarily shut it off for the weekend. Truthfully, while this wasn't closure, it felt like a tier of such a practice, and I've come out of the weekend with a better sense of myself than I could have ever predicted. January 5th, 2018 seemed like someone else's dream, but turned out to be my lack of anticipation coming to fruition. Sometimes you've just got to let things be as they are, and the result will turn out to feel like some form of tangible magic. I'm going to take my magic and wallow in it. We did good for each other this weekend.