Flashback

Was walking to work and suddenly flashed back to a spontaneous dance party in Rachel's room last year.

These had happened before, but never on the scale of this one. I think it was either shortly before senior projects were due or immediately after we'd turned them in, but we were really eager to distract ourselves from stress and from our imminent graduation. I remember at the time I felt like it was a huge cloud looming over everything, calling not only my future into question, but also every detail of my life up until that point--my interests, my friendships, even down to the way I dressed myself (mismatched, neon yellow socks and bright pink hair wouldn't be as welcome among the "grownups" was my guess).

But we were too tired to process all this stuff, and I think that deep down we really just wanted to have a good time and maybe destroy ourselves a little bit. Rach was living in Mannex, and there was a party in Manor that night, and I think all of us were praying that just once it'd be decent. So we pregamed a bit. Then we pregamed a bit more. We were drunk. We walked through Mannex to Manor, made approximately one complete round of the nearly empty room, and then paraded back to Rachel's disappointed.

But what the hell, we were tired and just wanted to do something. So we ended up raiding Rachel's ENORMOUS collection of sunglasses, blasting music on her speakers, and dancing around her tiny room for hours and hours. A whole bunch of us were there--Rachel of course, Logan, Brenda, Nelson, Keenan was there and even danced a bit...or at least didn't stand around in the corner and shun us. Stace might've been there too, but she may have been busy that night.

So yeah. Finally all of us were really tired and sweaty and went off to bed. I can't dance at all, and usually I was a skulker at parties, occupying corners until friends dragged me out onto the floor. That or I'd be having some overly loud and enthusiastic discussion with my fellow smokers outside, which would lead to 100,000 other discussions and keep me conveniently occupied until the party ended.

But on that night I danced around like crazy, because I was with my best friends in the entire world and at a certain point it just stopped mattering. Besides, we were wearing awesome sunglasses.

I think that was one of the best nights I've ever had.

I miss those people.

Today--Ava Luna, "Clips" and "Past the Barbary" on repeat.