Everytime I experience this sensation of feeling out of place all of a sudden, I find myself going through my iTunes and YouTube, looking for music to help prolong my nostalgia of simpler times. At least that's how i remembered it.
These include people like Tina Turner and Jon B to bands like Chicago. I face ridicule from others sometimes for being a Chicago fan, but I can't say I care. True story - an old boyfriend wanted to get me a gift after we'd been together for about three months. He knew i'd been talking about getting the new Chicago Greatest Hits album that had just been released at the time (2004's The Chicago Story) so he told me over the phone he wanted to get it for me instead. A few days later he gives it to me when we see each other. I stare at it. It's the soundtrack to the film Chicago with Catherine Zeta Jones and Richard Gere that had been released right before the greatest hits compilation by the band Chicago. Even worse - he was too lazy to go out to a record store and buy it himself, so he asked his older brother who was running errands to get it and pass it to him. That stuff means something. It's always the little things that count. After I explain to him that I was talking about the band, he reacts with total confusion, saying, "wow. I didn't think you listened to Chicago."
Side note - every bad ex boyfriend story I've shared on the blog is based on one guy. He was your typical useless nineteen year old boyfriend, the only incompatible guy I've ever dated due to bad judgment.
All was good in the end though, because after I told my brother about what had happened and he laughed, he went out and got me the actual Chicago album for my birthday a few weeks later. And I played it to death.
♫ Chicago - Here In My Heart
I don't know if feel the same way, but listening to old school music really is a mystical experience for me, because I can go back to the late 80's and remember the cloudless day in Taipei when I was in the car with my parents as we headed to the hospital, as my sister and I excitedly tried to guess what name they had decided on for the brother we were about to have. Or standing at the bus stop with my mom on an early cold, grey morning as she waved me off, and then stepping off the same bus later that day to see her standing there waiting in the same spot, and asking in utter shock, "were you waiting here for me the whole time?"
Anyway, revisiting the days of my childhood and certain memories, moments and feelings with clarity, with nothing altered but still as how it was left behind made me consider all the things that have transpired between then and now. Childhood and young adulthood. And with these 90's hits playing in the background, about lovey dovey love, and hopes and dreams, I felt a deep seated frustration rise up from the pit of my stomach as I thought of all the missed opportunities in my life.
Missed opportunities defines my life in such a thorough way. I realize it now, the accuracy of it. Times in the past when I had something great in front of me, but just didn't reach out to grab it. I am not just talking about people, but you know, anything that comes your way for a short moment, and if you're fast enough, things would have turned out differently, and maybe you'd have been a different person. And yet I don't think that's actually a comforting thought.
