second year kyra posey

Here, you aren’t broken or ruined.

You walk in, immediately engulfed in a darkness only illuminated by stage light, and the foreign room instantly feels familiar. Or maybe comfortable is the right word. You don’t account for the strange faces you see or the overwhelming feeling of body heat that consumes you, but you instantly understand that this atmosphere is something you have unwittingly been longing for.

Here, no midterm, quiz, or final can touch you. Here you are free from the guy you have been trying to avoid, or that girl who keeps on telling you that no, she can’t go to dinner on Friday.

You may desire to feel noticed. Or you may want to become utterly lost in the crowd once the music begins, to forget your name and to become different.

Different. Different from your day-to-day, perhaps, or different from yourself entirely. All the time you are bursting at the seams with something to say, with so much on your mind that you don’t know what to do with it; here, you’re allowed to let it go. You aren’t used to this feeling on an average day. You recognize that your experience is bottled up inside of you, and begin to anticipate the relief that comes with finally exerting that energy. You understood this the instant you walked through the door, and it knocks you off your feet.

Maybe, for once, you desire to feel something new, because you’ve become accustomed to how things are.

Something. You feel it as you wait in the crowd, with the hum of voices around you. You feel it as steady as the beat of the bass. Heavy. Light. Sexy. Invisible. Free and unashamed, you dance as though no one is watching, or perhaps as though the one person who you want most is watching. Either way, you’re a part of a crowd where you’re allowed to feel different yet the same all at once.

Here, you can have the multifaceted experience you’ve craved. You don’t have to commit to one emotion or sensation. The question, “How do you feel today?” seems completely out of place and out of touch here- for this, you’re relieved. For once, there is no desire to complain or to boast, but only to feel. In the bustling, excited crowd with the music vibrating in the air around you, this becomes possible. You feel so individual yet part of something all at once that your experience still matters but has no room for discussion here. Nobody seems worried about this, so you don’t worry either. You only enjoy, dance, and scream, fully emptying yourself. You perform a type of catharsis that is only available to you here.

And you begin to remember why people love concerts so much.

The Concert