Dashboard Kind of Feeling.

It’s the perfect kind of night in late August — the kind of night that brings relief after a too hot, too humid scorcher of a day. One of those nights when you can tell that fall is on the horizon somewhere, but for now, the summer breeze is warm on your bare legs and you feel comfortable without needing any extra layers of protection. The sun is setting and you can see it turning every single shade of orange and pink at the same time in the backdrop like the perfect scene in a movie. You think to yourself that it resembles a desktop screensaver, but maybe it’s the wine making things seem more beautiful than they actually are. You’re snapped back into focus as lights flash, the crowd roars, and the music starts. You simultaneously attempt to watch the band and the hundreds of people around you, all singing — no, screaming, the words to songs that are so ingrained in you that they’re almost written on your heart. They’re familiar, they’re an old friend, and even though you only came with two people you know tonight — well, one you know and one you just met, you’ve never felt less alone.

In this moment, you feel unapologetically happy, light and free.

One of the most interesting cliches to me has always been about how fast time goes. About how one night, one moment, can seemingly last forever while you’re living it, but you look back and it seems like another lifetime. Like it maybe wasn’t really you, just someone that looked like you, with a similar soul and more innocent looking eyes.

I blink and I’m 17 years old. I’m in a dark, dimly lit concert hall with paint peeling off of the walls, giving away it’s age, admitting that it knows it won’t see two years from now. The building has to be past capacity, I think, as I’m shaken off balance for the third time in a row by the pushy crowd. I feel someone grab my hand, steadying me. I look over and smile. It’s our third anniversary and we’ve been dying to see this band forever. We’ve memorized every lyric, each pause and breath the singer takes and we’re finally here. You squeeze my hand and the irony is lost on me that the songs we both love so much were just weeks ago on repeat in my room as I cried into my pillow, when you, my first love, betrayed me — and not for the first time. We watch the show in awe, completely abandoning our teenage tendencies of feigning disinterest in even things that deep-down excite us. We’re young and in love and we feel invincible. But as we would learn, nothing is forever, especially feelings, and soon enough, we’re fighting on the way home. You’re screaming in your bedroom and I’m there, but I’m not — I’m desperately fighting to remember the feelings from that concert hall and believe you when you say that it’s my fault that things have gone so wrong. Your temper is a hurricane and I’m constantly pulled into the center. Years later I’ll realize how badly this will affect any and all future relationships I’ll try to get into, but on this night, I drive home from your house feeling bruised, weak, and defeated. I feel small, worthless. I put on the band to comfort me for the drive, although I’m too tired to sing along.

It’s 2016. I’m seeing Dashboard Confessional for the second time, six years later, and in the midst of screaming along to every single word and chorus in the entire setlist, I remind myself how far I’ve come. I feel whole and I feel powerful and I feel alive. The girl I was at 17 seems so far away, and I instantly wish I could hug her and tell her everything will work out. As painful as looking back can be, in this moment of reliving this experience in a completely different light forces me to look back, if only for a minute. And it makes me thankful. It makes me realize that life is beautiful and cyclic and even when we’re convinced a moment or terrible feeling will last forever, time knows better. I’m yelling the lyrics to the encore at the top of my lungs and laughing and crying and smiling all at once. The sun has set now and as the band hits the final note, I feel complete.

I’m sure Chris Carrabba has played Hands Down hundreds and thousands of times and I always wondered how artists can continue to play the same song, years later, with just as much passion as in the beginning. Until I realized that songs are beautiful because new memories can constantly become attached to them.