About four months ago, maybe five, I was sitting in my classroom when Griffin sent me a text telling me that Angels and Airwaves was coming down on September 10. For those of you unaware, Angels and Airwaves, or AVA, part of "the holy trinity of Blink-182, Angels and Airwaves, and +44/Boxcar Racer," according to one of my posts from 2012, is a band that while not a part of my technical formative years, may as well have been because they had such a significant effect on not only my life, but the lives of all four people who at one time lived in this house.
Lest you question the importance of AVA on the people who hail from the Marthentyre residence, when presale tickets went on sale near the end of last school year, Glenn, who I'm pretty sure everyone knows can't stand me at all, told Griffin I could use his special code to buy some for me and Keifer in case they sold out. AVA is just...well, they're just us, or at least the us that once was.
When I looked up the show, which was in Orlando, I saw it was on a Tuesday, but I didn't care. I'd been working at MHS long enough to miss a day of school near the beginning of the year; plus, formative, seminal band and stuff. Missing work instead of the show was the only option...when I worked at Miramar High. As you all know, that's no longer the case.
Still, seminal band and stuff. I couldn't miss the show (and neither could Kei, who was planning on taking a bus from Jacksonville to meet me at the show (Griffin would be going with Glenn and his girlfriend, Chanel)), but I also couldn't miss work. As unappealing as the thought of it was, I'd just have to drive to Orlando after school and then home again the same night. Sure, the next day at work would be awful, but it was one day. I'd live.
Well, as the show got closer, the thought of making the drive there and back in one night and working the next day got less and less appealing, and then, as you know, the whole being faux broken--fauxkin?--up with by M thing happened on Friday night, so by the time Monday morning came around, the day before the show, I could think of about a million things I'd rather do than go. Still, AVA was coming and Kei and I had plans, so I bought him his bus ticket to Orlando and did everything I could to minimize the exhaustion and stress I knew the next day would bring: picked out my clothes, packed my breakfast and lunch, did everything I had to do extra early so I could get in bed by 11:00 since I knew I'd be up until about 2:30 the next day...
I think this is now my favorite expression because it applies to literally everything in my life, but the best laid plans of mice and men, right? 2:30 in the morning the boy who now only sort of lives in my house comes waltzing in, slamming the door and waking both Hudson and me up, and I couldn't get back to bed until after 4. What kind of mood do you think I was in the next day? And what kind of mood do you think I was in when, at 2:15 in the afternoon while I was discussing "The Gilded Six-Bits," Kei called to tell me he got to the bus station early but the bus was backing out and they refused to let him board, so I was out the money for a concert ticket and bus ticket and going to the concert alone while Griffin was going to be there with Glenn and Chanel?
If you're thinking I was in the kind of mood that would make me want to kill everyone and get in bed and never get back out, you're thinking too positively. Upset doesn't even begin to cover it.
I called Griffin and told him I didn't know if I was going to the show and got in bed to take a power nap. I decided I'd sleep for 20 minutes and then decide, but really since the second Kei called me, I had already decided I wouldn't go. The notion I had a decision to make was just me being my usual non-committal self.
At 4:00 my alarm went off. I got up. Got out of bed. Decided again I wouldn't go. Drive for three-and-a-half hours there, watch a show all by myself, and then make the trip back home, most likely having to stop at rest stops for power naps like when I made the same trip for Joyce Manor last year? Uh-uh. Absolutely not.
Then I had a conversation with myself as I very often do, and it came down to me asking myself this: Which decision would be worse? I knew either way I'd have regrets; it was just a matter of which I'd regret more.
About ten minutes after I made my decision, this
,
and it's one of the best decisions I've made in my life.
I wish I could explain to you the way I felt at the AVA show, the sense of hope, and happiness, and fulfillment, and wonder. I wish I could make you understand that it was just exactly where I was supposed to be at just exactly that time. I wish that you could feel what I felt at the AVA show. Everybody should be have the chance to feel like that at some point in their lives.
Now is the time when I tell you that if you're wondering how long it will take me to get over my most recent instance of utter despair and heart-wrenching pain--the fauxk up--the one that made me sob on my bathroom floor Friday night, hunker down in my house all weekend right after, and swear off boys for an indefinite amount of time, already turning down two dates, one with D from my super quick cheat sheet, the answer, apparently, is two days fewer than it's been, so that's, what? Four days and a few hours with Tom DeLonge?
As it turns out, I was right not so long ago when I said I probably wasn't really the ittiest, bittiest, teeniest, tiniest, microscopickest, infinitesimallest bit in love with M but instead one-hundred percent high on dopamine and oxytocin whenever I was around him. By Monday after school, all AVA issues aside, I was already feeling better, so much so that I told my cousin that I felt oddly all right, by Tuesday when I was on my way to the show, he barely crossed my mind, and when I was there? I off-and-on thought about exactly one guy the whole time, and it certainly wasn't anybody in the Kismet department of my life.
When I left the show and went the wrong way because I can't follow directions even with a gps, I wasn't happy I was lost and way north of Orlando, but I was still in a good mood. At 2:00 when I ran over a humongous rock in the middle of the turnpike and my tire blew out causing me to swerve all over the road and then have to wait for somebody to come and put on my spare? Nary a negative thought. AVA restored what on Friday I thought I lost but didn't because six-heart sex on a five-heart scale is pretty fucking nice, but my light? That's all mine.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again (not the sugar thing; that's just common sense):
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