Timehopping through Memories
One year ago, I was in the middle of my first European vacation, which covered Cardiff, Berlin, Amsterdam and London.
Two years ago, I was in the hospital getting my leg stitched back together after a falling mirror made chicken cutlets out of my shin.
It's weird to look back and see two moments in my life happened almost exactly a year apart, one on each side of the spectrum. And what's perhaps even weirder, I probably wouldn't have thought to much about either of these events without an app I never thought I wanted (Timehop, I'm talking about Timehop).
What it made me realize though, is despite making Tweets and Mascara (the earlier, way less cool iteration of ATOB) for the sole reason to stop and reflect on life and how much living I fit into it, I still haven't done a good job of it. I still don't often appreciate how much happens.
When I was in Cardiff for our international band performance, there was this moment backstage right before we were about to go on. The band was just giggling, jumping around and singing along to the prior act to ours, "Wagon Wheel," which is a classic American college party song. We all circled up, and that's when it hit.
This is a moment we'll remember forever.
We'll remember every single moment of it. And I do. I remember strapping the bass guitar to my body and nervously shaking, but also jumping in excitement. I remember getting on-stage and the lights coming up on us, illuminating the screaming table of our coworkers.
I remember the glance I gave to our lead singer right before the chorus began. I remember turning to all of our "competition," reveling in the fact that they were singing along. I remember coming off stage and receiving more hugs at once than I can ever remember getting in my life.
Then there was the chugging bottles of champagne, and memories become a bit more like a series of snapshots. We danced in a back room of a karaoke bar. People traded shoes. Then "Don't Stop Believing" came on, and I remember screaming every wrong lyric.
Those memories really stick with you, but you do have to pull them to recall them. And that's an exercise I want to do more of moving forward.
Even the bad memories, if we were to flash back two years ago to the great mirror fall, that's a story that really imprinted itself to my memory too, but in another way. While I don't look back and think, "Wow, was that awesome!" I remember the love I felt that night and the following weeks, with my one friend cleaning my bloody rug, and the other driving me and staying at the hospital all night.
And then there was Cazey, who is the only person I know that could be so supportive and overly curiously at once. For the record, I have since looked at the image of my open leg, which, as predicted, I vividly still remember seeing in-person when I initially looked down after impact. I was right, you really don't forget that.
I'm not suggesting getting hit with a mirror to see how much people care about you, but it makes the pain a lot easier to cope with. And it still makes quite the story.