Sunscreen

    This summer I said I would be writing my last blog post for a while, but I guess I lied. When inspiration strikes, it strikes and more often than not, it's usually late at night. It's usually fall. I usually feel sentimental. 

    I'm someone who gets stuck on the past or the future more often than not. I've talked about that previously, so I won't go into too much detail there, but this summer has been an ACT of letting go. And it's been really good for me. I don't believe sentimentality and nostalgia are wrong, but it doesn't do anything to dwell on past events. It doesn't do anything to dwell on anything that's out of my control. But honoring emotions when you feel them and letting them go is an art that I haven't completely conquered yet, and I think that's something most people struggle with. 

    My absolute favorite song at the moment is "Quiet Light" by The National. Every single lyric in the song is so good. It's truthfully a song about that moment when you're moving on from someone - and it all still hurts, but you learn to live with the truth that life moves on. 

"I used to fall asleep to you talking to me
I don't listen to anything now
Nothing to do with us
I'm just so tired of thinking about everything
I'm not afraid of being alone
I just don't know what to do with my time
Between you and me
I thought it would all last a little while longer

But I'm learning to lie here in the quiet light
While I watch the sky go from black to gray
Learning how not to die inside a little
Every time I think about you and wonder if you are awake"

    This song HITS. It is so good. Anyone who knows me knows I can't let people go very easily. I genuinely believe there's just some people who have an easier time moving on, and there's others who take a little while longer to move on. Neither is wrong, it just is what it is. It takes me time. There is not one single person in my life that I can think of that I would refuse to ever be friends with again. 

    However, there is one thing I noticed about myself: Since the age of 15, I've been writing in a journal every night (or I try to write every night). During bad times in my life, I won't write for a month, sometimes I miss a day or two, but I usually write in it every night. 

    Anyone who knows me knows I journal a lot. 

    Anyone who knows me also knows I love nothing more than finding new music and going to concerts. 

    Every night, I'll write a "Song for the Day" with my journal entry. I don't really know why, it's just kind of a routine now. I usually just go through one of my mass Spotify playlists and just follow down the list of songs and write which one ever comes next. It's interesting! Sometimes sad songs correlate with bad days, or I'll hit a rough spot in a friendship and the "Song for the Day" will be a song that person showed me. I don't think there's probably much weight in it at all, it just gives me a sort of comfort and reminds me that I have a good music taste. 

    Each year, I'll make a Spotify playlist starting the day after my birthday (July 16) and I'll add the "Song for the Day" from days in my journal that were super significant for that year. Sometimes it's graduations; sometimes it's a first kiss with someone; sometimes it's a wedding; sometimes it's a funeral. It could be me moving to a new apartment, starting a new school year, a concert. Whatever it is, that song is significant for that year. (If you wanna know your song for your bday that I happened to write down in my journal, hit me up, I can tell you. Or! If you wanna know what I randomly wrote down for my college graduation song or the day my ex and I broke up. It's all very fascinating. Plus, I just like sharing music.)

    But, the other day, I realized I got it all wrong. These are significant days, and yes, they are important, and yes I am grateful for them. But there are so many days I missed. 

    It hit me during this moment: 

    My parents and two younger sisters recently moved to Kansas City. My 20yo sister and me decided to stay in Colorado. I started grad school!!! (Also, shoutout to my post in March about just wanting to get chai and walk to Stats class during the fall, because I did that yesterday and cue "Manifest" by Andrew Bird aka my song of the year). Anywho, we stayed. My parents ultimately decided to rent our house, so they're still looking around for people to rent it. But my sister and I will drive up to Estes from Denver usually every weekend to kind of slowly bring the rest of our stuff down to our apartment. The house is pretty empty in general. I have my bass guitar still up there and there's a few things we need to drop off at a thrift store, but this is all beside the point. 

    I was sitting on the floor in my childhood bedroom - like with the two twin sized beds in the room I lived in from the ages of 5-10. It's funny because I lived in nearly every bedroom in that house and I ended it all in the first room I lived in, and it's honestly pretty comforting to think about. But my sister and I were sitting on the floor and she looked at me and said, "You wanna rub this sunscreen into my face?" which in retrospect, I have no idea why she wanted me to, but I also agreed. And I agreed by saying, "Only if we listen to a specific song from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack." So we listened to the song "Phone Call" on the soundtrack and sat on the hardwood floors and then I just rubbed the sunscreen into her face and then she rubbed the sunscreen into my face. The song is a little over a minute long, but we just closed our eyes and just sat on the ground in our childhood room in our empty house - just the two of us remainders of our family in the town we grew up in. It was peaceful. That's all it was. And I realized I've been adding the wrong songs to my playlists. 

    Don't get me wrong, I still remember when I kissed this guy for the first time. Early spring - it was dark outside. We were inside, but I could still hear people walking around outside even late into the night. The promise of summer was right around the corner. I remember walking out into the quiet light when I left. I still remember the smell of his house, I remember calling my friend and telling her about it. I remember the excitement. 

    Don't get me wrong, I still remember when my parents got their dog. She was just a tiny, little thing. She was kind of shivering when I picked her up. 

    Don't get me wrong, I still remember where I was when I realized my mom had cancer. Upstairs on the top level of my parents' house in Estes. It was the middle of the summer. I was hot. I felt that all so familiar feeling of my heart dropping into my stomach. 

    Don't get me wrong, I still remember when I got accepted into graduate school. I was working retail. It was right before COVID hit. I got a voicemail. I listened to it on my break and ran outside of the break room to my coworker and when I told her she started crying and I almost started crying. I ran outside to call my mom because I had really bad service in the break room. I remember a song from the La La Land soundtrack was stuck in my head. 

    Don't get me wrong, I remember when my ex broke up with me and I cried and put my head in his lap and wrapped my arms around his waist and cried, "Don't leave me, I don't know what to do." And I realized I had my own insecure attachment issues to work through. 

    But, I remember clear as day what it felt like to listen to "Phone Call" in my empty, cold, childhood home and feel my sister rub sunscreen into my face. Where is the song for that?

    I'm starting to realize now that there's so many more precious moments than I've even realized. Watching my friend paint her nails while we have the best talks I've ever had in my life with Trevor Hall playing in the background on her phone is life-giving. 

    Walking around the botanic gardens in Albuquerque with my friend right before the Death Cab concert and seeing a tarantula named after David Bowie. I think I posted it on my Snapchat and said, "We could be heroes." I thought I was a genius. 

    This past week when my friend knew I was having a crappy day and she brought over wine and I just lied on the couch and watched New Girl. I did the absolute bare minimum. But I was so honored to have her in my life. 

    And it is such an absolute honor to be in people's lives. 

    I want to go back. I want to go through all my old journals and re-write all my playlists on Spotify with a collection of songs from these seemingly insignificant moments that weren't insignificant at all. The collection of songs I've had were from moments that were so significant and precious to me, but I neglected all the moments that were equally precious, if not more so, yet insignificant. 

    Those quiet moments of peace. 

    The summer of 2019, I was watching Taylor Swift's Tiny Desk Concert downstairs in my parents' house waiting for my family to come back from Kansas City. I started tearing up because I think even then I knew I wouldn't get that moment back. The cool, summertime breeze floated through the window while I listened to "All Too Well" and I knew I'd never get that moment again. 

    Honoring the past is important. Honoring the significant moments are important. 

    But I know now that I'll never experience that breakup again or that acceptance into grad school again. I'll never experience that first kiss with the same person again and my dog will never be a puppy again. 

    But, I also know that the insignificant moments may linger longer. When I'm sad, I can go across the hall to my sister's room and ask her to rub sunscreen into my face. I can ask my friend if she wants to take a weekend trip to New Mexico again. I know my friend will bring me wine if I just called her and said, "Dammit, I'm sad." I know there's so many more conversations to be had with these people who are present in my life, right now. Right now, this moment is all we got. 

    I'm absolutely honored to have been chosen in these people's lives. I'm absolutely honored to have been in the lives of past people I don't talk to anymore. You all have been the most important part of my life. I put a lot of weight into my accomplishments, but at what cost really? I see nothing more purposeful than the relationships I have in my life. I see nothing more sacred. 

    At this moment, I'm just in my bed in my apartment in Denver, Colorado listening to Ray LaMontagne and typing this post up on my laptop. And I feel very honored to even be existing in this moment at all. I'm looking around my room at the Nirvana poster I have up; a poster for The Oh Hellos New Years Eve concert from 2013 crookedly hanging up right next to it. I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings. I'm excited to take it all a day at a time. I'm excited to leave the past in the past. 

    What a privilege it is to be alive.