You have so many relationships in this life : Day Twenty-five

Over the last week, I have been in a pretty dark place.  I've sunk pretty deeply into a depression that I haven't seen for at least the last couple of years.  I have been functioning at the most basic of levels, in order to keep myself and my child sustained.  I haven't let on to him how much internally I have been dealing with, but on nights when he goes to bed, it's all I can do just to go through the simple tasks before crashing myself.  I have no energy.  I feel myself isolating, and there's honestly not much I can do about it.  In these times, I used to be able to write, but now, I feel a total loss of words.  I am trying to get myself back.  So I thought this would be a good place to start.

Day 25 – A first

As today is Taylor Hanson's 28th birthday, I figured what is a better way to celebrate than to write something about him?  Or my experience with him.  My first Hanson concert.

The tickets went on sale when I was in Florida for a band trip, just after my freshman year of high school, so my mother, the great person that she is, waited patiently online at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning.  She landed four tickets (for her, myself, my younger sister, and my best friend and fellow Hanson lover, Nichole.) in the 56th row at the Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver, Colorado. 

As a teenage girl, very little compares to being in close proximity to a celebrity you are "in love" with.  Nichole and I had spent all night the night before the concert making posters.  We talked endlessly about how we were going to meet, them, get them to fall in love with us.  This was 13 years ago, and though I will never forget it, there are only small details left in the back of my head.

It was 104 degrees in Denver that day.  When we got to the Amphitheater, I burned my elbow leaning on the rock, to this day there is still a soft scar there.  The venue itself is breathtaking.  Everything surrounding you is red rock.  Everything.  Around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, we got to the venue, and witnessed the boys unloading from their tour bus, running around like the young boys they were.  We were ecstatic.  Even though we shared that moment with hundreds of other people, it still feels like it was only us.

There was the bathroom, that we couldn't figure out how to work the sink to wash our hands.  There was the $3 bottles of water, and the hundreds and hundreds of stairs.  There was the "mom" section at the top, and the sea of little girls down below.  There was the sound, and the raw emotion of three boys playing the songs they had written.

Only two of our photos turned out.  The first is of us standing in the line of cars waiting to get in to park, where we are holding our signs.  The other is from the show where the only thing you can see are the stage lights, unless you squint and you're able to see the outlines of the boys in their respective places.

Getting back to the hotel that night, Nichole and I slept on cots while my mother and sister took the bed.  My throat burned from all of the screaming and singing.  I lost my voice the next day.  It was worth it.

Nichole kept her hair in tiny braids for the next two weeks.

I have now seen these boys live over ten times.  I have driven, and flown, and laughed, and cried.  I have shook Taylor's hand four times.  Had my photo taken, willingly, with both Taylor and Isaac.  This band has led me to more friends, and more memories, and more happiness than I could have ever hoped for from a band of three brothers.  I have friends scattered across the country, from east to west, north to south.  I have friends overseas.  People I never would have met otherwise.

I feel sorry for people who have never loved a band as much as I have loved this one.  They will just NEVER understand.