Went to a Boys Like Girls concert tonight for 13 year old me.
Naturally, it was nostalgic: brought me back to 2007 - 2010. Back when I lived in Georgia and Texas, before New York was even in the picture. I consider younger me, the Romantic, who was always searching for a Great Escape. Always looking out the window wishing I live in California because I just knew that was where I belonged. I was right, of course, even at 13. There was this deep American sensibility to me, so tapped into pop culture, that was buried under the religious, Southern socialization that I experienced. It was freedom I was truly in search of, and the spark of fire that had been burning in me since I could remember. I mourn for the teenager in me who lived in Los Angeles in the 2010s. Who followed his dreams and wore his tanned olive skin under band t-shirts and listened to pop rock music in his car and dated a cute girl or boy, even. That teenager probably started his own garage band and had toured a few times by now. This concert was an escape -- back to real 13 year old me who lived in the suburbs of Atlanta and then the dusty backroads of Ft. Worth. But also back to when dreaming about the California life I'm living now was simply enough.