sugar coated angst.

yay! it's tuesday. 

Tune in Tuesday, that is. 
and i know i probably say this every week, but seriously. this week the tunes are amazing.
as always, let's begin with a little story/explanation. shall we? do let's.

okay. so let's get serious for a minute.
i was a weird teenager.
i recently stumbled upon a whole stack of my old year books from middle school up through my senior year of high school. it's always fun to go back and look through them and laugh at all the many flavors of awkward there are in the world. and it's fun to remember the days like prom-the single most important day of the junior/senior year. it's funny how it seemed that one day somehow controlled the cosmos and held the earth in its place. anyways, i also really enjoy reading the things people wrote in my year books. 
side note: H.A.G.S? really? was i the only person who found that more of an offense than a summer salutation?
i mean..whatever. 
upon reading through all these year book signings, i determined one thing about my teenage self.
i was sweet.
and this is what people, above anything else, felt they should write in my year book at the end of each year. sure, there were other "i'll never forget that time in Biology..." or "i'm so glad we had 3 classes together this year" or "(insert inside joke that really isn't that funny here) LOL! LOVE YA!" comments, but above all, or intermingled in those other ones, almost every person wrote some comment about my sweetness.

and i think i was a genuinely sweet person.
i really did try to be a good friend to every one. 
i tried to be a pleasant person to be around. 
and i suppose i did a good job at it.
but there's a part of me that laughs at those comments.
because i feel like i had a sort of alter-ego in those days.
it's like from 8:00-3:00 Monday-Friday i was Katie Mormon. (yes, a good friend did, indeed, forget my last name and blurted out Katie Mormon. nice.) i was always willing to summarize the last night's reading to anyone who was too busy/lazy to read it. i always pulled the weight in group projects. i tried to help people as much as possible and provide tampons to those in need. i really was sweet. 
i wasn't hot. gosh,no i wasn't hot.
i was sort of chubby and i wore a uniform and unless you were smoking hot, no one was really ever "hot" in uniform. 

this was me on my first day of my senior year. oh, the uniform.

i wasn't popular.
heavens, no i wasn't popular. i didn't go to a single party my entire high school career. i didn't even get asked to prom either year. but i had a few good friends and people knew me and knew who i was. (however, there were only 400 kids in the school so it was sort of impossible to not at least know of every one.)
but really i was just me.
i was sweet.

until the bell rang and i was in my car, driving the 30 minute drive back to my house.
and at that point-i was angsty.
and i really don't know why.
my parents were together and happy.
my family loved me and we weren't poverty stricken.
i believed in God and all in all, i was pretty happy with the cards i had been dealt.
i hadn't been jaded by unrequited love or fake friendships. (that came later.)
the only thing i really had was a private school that i didn't fit in or out of and "weird" morals that sort of set me apart from everyone else and kept me from living the "normal" high school life.
but even that didn't completely justify my angst.
i just remember feeling like i was different but i didn't know how to be different.
i felt like there was more to me than just "sweet". but i didn't know how to express or portray it.
every day i felt like i would go crazy if i walked by one more car that was blaring DMB. 
(don't get me wrong. Dave Matthews Band is incredible. but i could only handle so much uniformity in my life.)
and all of that feeling i had came out in my music. 
and when it was just me, alone in my car--i was not about to turn on the radio and listen to what everyone else was listening to. i was way too emotionally emo for that. 

so today i am sharing with you the music of my high school days.
the songs that i heard live at the Warped Tour.

me and the lead singer of Mae. yes, i thought i was cool in my old, goodwill t-shirt.
warped tour 2005

me and my friend catherine and a "trying to make it" band. yes, we kissed them. stop judging me.

the songs that guaranteed friendship if someone else liked the song. 
(i honestly think it's what sealed the deal and allowed me to be best friends with my biffle, brittany.) 

me and brittany. april 2005. 

the songs that the boys i liked had to like, too in order for me to like them. (make sense?)

this was alex. he was in a band and that, in addition to his hair and his body type was all i needed to form a crush that lasted a number of years.

the songs that i could scream to.

the songs that i could cry to.
the songs that were  much more than just "sweet".

it was in high school that i really felt like music was a friend to me.
and these were the songs that solidified that friendship.
these songs understood me, they were real and raw. they had meaning and i understood them.
they were never on the radio. no one i knew at school had ever heard of any of the bands.
and if they had heard the songs, they would have hated them.
and the hipster cat in me loved that.
these were my jams. 


 
and you guys, there was a time-in a world outside of savannah christian high school, outside of savannah completely-where other people felt the same way as i did. and they listened to the same music i did. and there was a time and place where i was actually sort of a cool kid. just sort of.
and these are the songs that take me back to those glory day. 
and when i met garrett and when i found out that his ipod was almost an exact replica of mine-i think i felt the first tinge of love.
my whole life i had pictured what my future husband would look like, and i'd be lying if i said i didn't picture him with a sweet iPod and a TBS t shirt on.

and look. there he is. oh, hey cute boy. i like your bleached hair.
taking back sunday concert; march 2007

so take a listen to my alter-ego soundtrack. 
take a trip down my memory lane.
taste the sweet, punk-band angst of the mid 2000's.
it's incredibly sweet.

love,
kate.

lyrics: we got older, but we're still young. we never grew out of this feeling that we won't give up.