it's sixteen miles to the promised land

oh here we are! damn this feels like im sitting in my ~*computer room*~ at 14 creepin' around the wild wild west we called the internet while AIM opens and slams doors in the background... three or four IM conversations open, survey in progress, chatting with people i barely knew on myspace (remember when you had to go back and forth to each other's profiles to reply?) it really takes me back. 

i signed up for my first myspace profile back in 2005... fuck i'm old. this fact is not lost on me, trust, my grey hairs remind me every day. i'll never forget when some bug or hack or whatever started deleting random profiles and i had to start all over again in 2006. the horror! i was so upset when i tried to log in and it said invalid username/password. then i checked my profile URL and it was gone. but i found my way back to my normal friend count in no time, reuploaded my best pictures with the coolest myspace angles, and remade my layout/imbedded all my images.. speaking of which, umm when did old skool html die?? i had to use a layout generator on here like a pleb! time to learn css...

i met one of my first "loves" on myspace, and i use quotes because it was a super toxic teenage relationship/friendship/what the fuck that bounced around for waaaay too long until we lost contact (finally) in 2011. it was weird because we were already friends on the site, since i added random people, then my close friend at the time messaged me on AIM and told me this kid had made fun of her on a school trip and she wanted me to give him a piece of my mind. i definitely never pass up a chance to do that, still to this day, so i got his AIM screenname from her and sent the first message. basically he was like nah your friend is crazy and here's how it really went down.. i honestly believed him because my friend did tend to lean towards the dramatic side. he asked for my myspace so i sent him my url and he was like oh we're already friends but i don't know you! my friend and i went to different schools because i had moved, so me and this kid hadn't met while i still lived there. from there it was all history, late night phone calls, finally meeting in person (at the mall lmfao) and just being there for each other until we couldn't. teenagers aren't exactly the best at that kind of stuff and we definitely put each other through some heavy shit. i hold no ill will towards him now! and the reason we ended our friendship for good actually had nothing to do with any lingering feelings, but rather shitty mutual friends. but i digress. if you ever come across this, rabbit boi, in another life our adults selves totally could have been friends! c'est la vie.

another thing myspace brought me was the world of local music. oh my god the local music scene!! it was a wonderland for a 14 year old who loved rock music but had no real identity yet, no real sense of community, and nowhere to go besides the mall. my mother, god BLESS her, drove me and my friends to shows almost every damn weekend, and it was the absolute best time of my life. prince of peace gang rise uppp! no hollywood ending, the bank robbers, signature escape, the years gone by, learning takes a lifetime, the inout inout, someday never, the bedroom demos, and so many more absolutely took over my life. in 2007 some members of learning takes a lifetime and a few outsiders became belafonte, and i also discovered another band called throw the heat through a super myspace famous dude called tony fantastic. i became pretty good friends with most of them, and even lead the street team for belafonte for awhile. soon our little scene started to taper off, belafonte only lasted a couple years, no hollywood ending had their last show in 2009 (i think), and the years gone by actually made it to a somewhat major label for exactly one album before they called it quits as well. by the time i graduated high school in the summer of '09 the vast majority of my favorite bands were a mere memory. i still feel a tightness in my chest when i think about no hollywood ending and the years gone by specifically... we really didn't know what we had in them. anyone who happens to randomly come across this, both those bands are on spotify and are definitely worth the listen! no hollywood ending's everybody's talking is still one of my all time favorite albums. however when it comes to the years gone by only the album that came out under whatever that label was is on spotify, so i'd recommend hunting for their self titled as well as the on the verge EP. i will always look back on those years fondly, and i doubt any of that would have happened if it weren't for fucking myspace.

it's been a rough couple years, this past year especially, and while i have a great family, amazing friends, and the absolute best boyfriend, i still feel like something is lacking. i just had covid, like literally this is like day 4 of feeling better, so i'm definitely battling some mental anguish from that whole experience. finding this site and losing myself in adding friends, making my profile look cute, posting surveys in bulletins, and rambling away in this text box is really bringing some happiness into my life. it's lame, i know, but nothing hits quite like nostalgia, and i'm gonna milk it while i can. 

besides, you cannot tell me that seeing new comments! new picture comments! new friend requests! new messages! wasn't the absolute best feeling ever and it beats the ever loving hell out of a red notification bubble that just says 12. suck it facebook! you're for old people anyway ;)