i went to osheaga with chris and a few friends this past weekend and even though emotions were high and tensions flared, it was a really beautiful time and everyone had fun.
nellie and i drove to montreal on thursday and it was an incredibly smooth ride. i went to booboo’s apartment and took a nap while he wrote a midterm, and then we went to laura’s to hang out before heading to bed.
it was so nice to see chris for the first time in so long, especially after the rough patch we’d been through. everything was really confusing and uncertain – and so kind of scary – but as soon as i saw him i was sure of how i felt.
it was like the first taste of water after a drought, and i was happy beyond both apprehension and comprehension.
sadiq and bre (and ashley and beril) arrived in the early morning the next day – they’d driven through the night. i handed bre the key to laura’s apartment and they went on their way to take naps and rest up for the big day.
eventually we were all at osheaga, and we were all having fun together for a while, but partway through the day, chris and i left everyone and had an adventure necessarily on our own.
we sat in a forest and everything was disorienting and layered and connected – and so, so complicated, and so, so heavy – and we wanted to be together but it was hard but it didn’t have to be and the first step to healing was acknowledging the negative feedback cycle we’d been caught in – the way we warped things to be sad and insecure – the way i was afraid and the way i pushed him away and the way that hurt me more and made me more afraid – the tightness and the pain – and we loved each other and we made each other happy and maybe that was all that mattered in the end – that he was there, that i was there, that we were there – that i love and am loved and i know and trust the truth of this –
and somehow we ended up at flume, which is where we wanted to be all along, and everything started coming together and we sat in the middle of the universe and watched a perfect sunset and i saw the golden haze and it was beautiful.
by the end of the day, we were so tired that we didn’t even go out that night.
the next day we had breakfast with bre and then chris stayed home while we went to osheaga.
i spent most of the day with bre and her crew and it was really fun. i know i say this all the time, but i love listening to live music – i love the energy of the performance and the electricity of the crowd and the way everything feeds off of everything else.
i saw sadiq for a little bit and ended the day watching jack white with nellie, which was really nice.
that night, chris, me, bre, beril and simone all went to blizzarts. some guy called me a faggot and told me i walked like a bitch and he was really big so we couldn’t pick a fight. it was both scary and infuriating, but the guy in line told me not to give a shit.
“don’t worry about it – that jackass probably just didn’t sell enough coke and has a fucking shitty life.”
but still, it was kind of a downer.
i danced through it, so it was okay.
chris had only gotten a ticket for friday, but his determination and courage were enough for him to sneak in on sunday. apparently he stalked the perimeters for an hour, climbed a fence and dodged security or something and it was all very impressive and incredibly romantic.
the highlight of the day was definitely seeing lorde with booboo (and friends). pure heroine was the first album we notably made out to. we played it way back when in my apartment right before he had to leave and it was all at once very passionate and sweet.
watching lorde perform was kind of cathartic, and it felt like everything was coming full circle – like it was all coming together and it was all going to be okay – and that’s a nice feeling.
chris and i went to the chvrches dj set at the corona theater that night and it was very reminiscent of the time we saw kaskade and we danced and it was fun and so many people came up to me to tell me how cute we were, which was very nice, but also kind of invasive.
we had a really good time, and the next day i was in a car with nellie, bre and beril on our way back home.
we stopped for harvey’s in brockville and everyone looked relatively boring and the same and it was really eerie.
and then we were home, with all these new memories of the crowds and the music and the glorious golden haze.