Sweet Disposition

I have this song I've been listening to recently that feels nostalgic even though it's a recent discovery. I've created memories to play through my mind as I listen to it, memories of things that haven't actually happened. It's weird because the memories are just as real as the music. The music starts playing and I remember the wind blowing through my hair as I sit in the passenger seat with the window rolled down during a road trip I've never taken. I recall running around downtown Houston and just staring up at skyscrapers and feeling like my life had all the potential in the world, feeling like anything at all was possible, though that's never occurred.

The song isn't particularly remarkable. I don't know what it is about it that made me play it on repeat while I fell asleep the night I downloaded it from iTunes or what kept me playing it on repeat the whole next day and why I have it playing on repeat right now. It's made me happy enough to jump out of bed and start dancing. It's made me hopeful enough to think everything is going to be just fine. But it's losing its magic. I told Brenden about the song and how much I love it and then I played it for him and felt embarrassed by just how unremarkable it is and how meaningless it was for him. How can such a song that has no real memories attached to it mean so much to me? I'm really trying to figure it out.

As I continue to listen to it while feeling the way I've been feeling lately has made the song become more sad than happy. I'm associating it with sadness, loneliness, confusion. I'm listening to it when I'm by myself trying not to cry, creating memories that hardly resemble road trips and feelings of opportunity.

But I refuse to stop listening to it. This song that has made its way into my music library a whole three days ago has helped me in a strange way. Even though it's new to me, it makes me think of high school and the feelings I had then when I had college to look forward to, when there was potential and hope for my life to get better. Are these really supposed to be the best years of my life? Am I going to discover later, just as I did with my time in high school which I hated, that I should've been more appreciative, that I should've paid more attention to the small things that are quickly fading and to the big things that I'm disregarding?