Have you daydreamed about a what a certain part of your life will be like? And then you get to that point and realize that none of it turned out the way you wanted it to? That’s what I did with my expectations of high school.

It started when I was around 12 or 13. I still do it today. When I hear songs, depending on what song or the meaning behind it, I kind of daydream my own music video for a specific song while listening to it. Its pretty much like letting the song fill your head with images. These images turn into memories and years later they could just end up being memories of where you were at the time you heard the song. Anyway, this is just kind of my way to put my own soundtrack to my life. I imagined my high school years to be similar to a Boys Like Girls music video, specifically the videos for “Thunder” and “Hero/Heroine.” These are songs that smack me in the face with nostalgia every time I hear them. Now if you’re never seen either of these music videos, Thunder kind of follows along with a big group of friends driving in a car around their town with the top down, causing havoc in a restaurant and then finally all meeting up in a field and toasting red bull (yeah right). Not that I ever had this massive urge to go my high school football field and do shots of red bull with my friends, but the idea of a big group like that of guys and girls just doing whatever together is something that never really happened when I was in high school. Maybe around my senior year that started to develop, but it quickly deteriorated with all of the mindless drama and what not.

For Hero/Heroine, this video involves the lead singer and what seems to be his girlfriend and just them spending time together. This one is probably more relatable with me than the other because when I thought about high school, I always imagined myself having a girlfriend. I just liked the idea of a relationship like that and that video just reminds me of how I used to think that way. Although I did have a girlfriend during my junior year, and that was just 3 months of pure bliss. I always imagined it being kind of a longer thing. I guess when I hear songs like Thunder or Hero/Heroine, it reminds me of the way I used to think when I was first hearing these songs.

Today I still listen to songs are create music videos for them in my head. I also envision the future, a lot. I always found myself thinking about where I’ll be after college, who I’ll be spending that time with, and what I’ll be doing as a career. I keep trying to remind myself of what I thought high school would be like and how I wasn’t even close. Maybe I’ll get the hint this time.

I’ve always heard the phrase/saying about how you have to be comfortable with being alone before you can be comfortable with anyone else. I’ve always believed this as true and felt that I did a pretty good job at it. But does this mean that you can’t be lonely? It’s been a long time since I’ve felt a level of comfort with a girl that I would tell her everything and I wanted to know everything about her. That’s what it’s really all about. At least I think.

I feel like I write about the same things all the time. It’s always on days where I’m a bit down or have a lot on my mind that I decide to write.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the music I listen to. I love it, I’m not saying I’m drifting away from it but all of my music is pretty much about relationships. I think that’s why all of that crap with my ex is still so clear almost. Throughout my entire life, I’ve listened to music about the girl. And I guess when I got a girlfriend, she filled in the image in my mind that comes to mind when I hear those songs. Now I listen to those without a definite idea of who they are about for me. I want someone who will fill that space.

Since I’ve been home from college, I haven’t taken the time to write. Even then, I started to do it less frequently. The one thing that can make me want to write is this one girl. In other posts, she’s known as my ex. In more recent posts, she’s this weird kind of friend of mine that deep down I still have the feelings for that I always have and have to try to act like I don’t at all.

Tonight, I saw her for the first time since August. We’re both home on break and decided to hang out and “catch up.” We had texted a few times over the course of the semester and I had even drunk texted her on a few occasions, which is never a great thing. None the less, we hung out. Things were very civil. It was just one of those ‘old friends’ atmospheres. We were headed to a conservatory in the city that still had all of its winter/Christmas lights up. It was so much like a date. I wish it had been.

We talked about how our semesters went and what we did for fun on our two very different campuses. Then, she asked me about the girls in my life, which is practically zero. She was asking about hook ups and things of that nature. I guess you can gather from past posts that I haven’t really been going insane in college. I answered her question with this and she was surprised, like really surprised. So I took the opportunity to ask her about different guys and stuff. (And just a small piece of background info, we had lost our virginities to each other, and I was her last before she went to college.) She told me she had hooked up with at least one other person. She didn’t go into specifics. This was something I had been preparing myself for forever. I knew it would happen, but it’s not something anyone ever wants to think about. It didn’t come as striking as I had expected it. It was bound to happen, that’s the way things go. I had hooked up with girls too.

The night went on, she’s the exact same person that she’s always been. I don’t know why, but when I’m around her, I just get this odd feeling. I can never tell if it’s good or bad. For example, the last time we hung out in the summer. I was driving and she was in the passenger seat. And for some reason, I was just so flustered almost. I ran a stop sign, I turned the wrong way on a one way street. She just makes me so, I don’t know. But again tonight, it wasn’t nearly as bad as running red lights, but she could even tell that I wasn’t driving particularly well. We ended up getting where we were going just fine.

Anyway the night went well. We talked a lot about a bunch of different things. I never dared bringing up anything about us or what we used to be. I knew she didn’t care for any of that anymore so it was just a lost cause. Although I did mention the CD. The CD was this collection of songs I had made for her around halfway through our senior year. It was a list of songs in order of which they happened that brought back a specific memory of us or me thinking of her. I gave it to her at her graduation party this past summer and she still hasn’t listened to it yet. I asked her when she was going to listen to it, and she said tonight, so hopefully it actually happens. Sometimes I think about that CD and think that maybe I don’t still feel the some of the songs portray me to feel. That CD took a lot of thought, so I think she should hear it no matter what. Throughout my entire life, music has always been the strongest trigger of memories and since I have so many memories with her, lots of songs have been, I don’t want to say ruined, but they have been tuned to make me think of her when I hear them.  Songs like those just show that in some way or another, she’ll always have a part of me.