Ever Since New York
Something they don’t tell you when you start therapy is that your lens for life slowly begins to change. The aperture lets the light in, if you will.
Let me take you back quickly to the first time I heard “Daylight.” When I blow leaves in my front yard, I usually throw on a playlist. This particular time, it was some pop artist similar to Harry. Probably Taylor Swift, because Love on Tour was happening when Midnights came out, if my recall is correct.
Cue my brain, “What is this? I like this? Harry Styles — the One Direction guy? No. This is insane. Oh wait.” And then, per ADHD guidelines, on repeat until I knew all the words.
Harry’s House was one of the first albums I listened to after I started EMDR. Matilda has saved me in multiple scenarios throughout the last three years of my life. That song spoke to my soul in a way I can’t articulate. I still can’t listen to it without water in my eyes. My Harry roots don’t run deep. I was not raised in the church of One Direction. I didn’t even know he went solo. But his discography has become a foundational part of finding joy in my life that comes from an internal place. The kind I didn’t have to earn, justify, or explain. I just loved it.
Three years ago, in therapy and life, I started a very real journey to heal myself after life-changing mental health diagnoses that left me in a deep state of grief. Somehow, I found the music when I needed it most.
Harry Styles at Madison Square Garden. Two short hours in the car.
I watched the seated security guard pull his phone and ask the security guard behind him a question. The internet has mentioned a prompt start to this show. I assume they are confused since we are a bit over. Mr. Styles is so reliable that 5 minutes leaves the people in his crew confused. That tells me he is respectful of everyone’s time. This is a real thought I had standing at the barricade 1 minute before I would see Harry Styles perform for the first time.
My phone was at 20% — probably not the best day to forget to charge my phone. Side note: I wanted to record my daughter’s favorite songs, but I also didn’t know I would be standing on a metal barricade with the man who sings to me every day about 10 ft above my face.
The spotlight behind him made him a jet-black silhouette every time he was in front of me. I stared blindly at the dark figure mouthing the words to the songs that had made me cry and laugh and dance and even though he was right there, I couldn’t process that this was the person who wrote this music. And now he is in front of you singing it. And he is just a person like you. A whole human being, very passionately doing something he loves. You feel this. You feel this for two hours.
For two hours, I stood in Madison Square Garden and watched my favorite artist sing my favorite songs, and for the first time in my life, I understood what collective effervescence felt like inside my body. I didn’t care who was next to me or what I looked like or even what song was going to come next. I could feel the happiness radiating from the nosebleeds. The air was so light that you couldn’t tell you were out of breath until the next song happened. Looking around, you could see friends holding hands, couples hugging, kids bouncing; a core memory you bring up for decades. When you aren’t fighting to see in front of you at a concert, it hits you intermittently that you are in a room with THOUSANDS of people and each of you is having a totally different time. I don’t know how I was both inside my body and outside my body at the same time. It was euphoric.
I am empathetic by circumstance and by nature. For a long time, that meant feeling everything and then carrying it like it was mine. The problem is that when you grow up in rotten places, you learn to absorb the room before you learn to ask whether the room is good for you. Therapy taught me that feeling something does not mean I have to keep it. So when however many thousand people were experiencing any given song at any given moment, I was able to feel it all without taking it from them. What a gift.
That is what made the concert feel different. One of the first lessons I needed to learn when I started with my therapist was that I could understand why I was frustrated or sad or happy, but that didn’t mean I was feeling those things. ‘I am so anxious’ was often an explanation from my brain, not an experience I could locate inside my body. Actually feeling — recognizing the sensation, honoring it, letting it move through you, and validating its existence in your body — is a much different exercise than figuring out the reason you felt nauseous when you saw your boss’s name come up on your phone.
As I stood with the metal barricade under my sweaty palms, the crew pulled the stage into place and prepared for the show to begin. A rush of heat and cold flooded from my chest to my toes and my hands started to tremble the same way they did the day we drove to Niagara Falls to get married in the first snowstorm of the season.
I listened to the album. I had the merch. I signed up for presale. I did not get presale. I tried general sale. I did not get that either. I was going to be in the pit, though. I told myself during Love on Tour I would see him live. I would see him live and I would experience it in the pit dancing and watching my favorite music come to life. I bought an overpriced resale ticket. I stressed about an outfit. I drove myself into a city I had never driven in even though driving makes me sick to my stomach. I navigated NYC, by myself, despite the panic attacks, getting lost, and desperately missing my partner even though I was solo on this trip because I wanted the experience to belong to me.
I was in NYC for 36 hours. I cried, laughed, screamed, panicked, sighed in relief, held my breath, and made multiple choices that I knew would benefit me but were extremely hard to do on my own. I didn’t make myself camp for a wristband because I was tired and wanted to sleep in, which felt like choosing myself instead of punishing myself for wanting a good spot. Growth, unfortunately. I woke up naturally and ended up with a number that I assumed would give me a good view. I waited in a pop-up line for 3 hours to get a shirt and pin that were exclusive to that shop. I got lost more times than I care to admit. Got some BALLER birria tacos from a truck outside of NYU, went back to my room to get ready, and felt like I had my life together for approximately nine minutes. Then I almost passed out on the subway getting back to MSG because, and I cannot stress this enough, guess who got lost again. Apparently, maps are more of a suggestion when I am in a city I have never explored alone.
When I called my husband at 6 p.m., frantic, I started tearing up telling him about how hard it was and how I couldn’t believe how tired I was. I wanted to go home, and I hadn’t even walked into the venue. Did I mention I was lost with 15 minutes to spare?
Get hay✨’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Suddenly, I realize I have maybe enough phone battery to take some pictures or videos of my seven-year-old’s favorite songs, but I certainly don’t need him walking onto the stage. I will just be present. If he is close to me, I will be present. I will look at him. I will feel everything. Because I have been talking my shit about this show since January. I have told anyone with ears that I was going to be able to see his pores. This was a bit. A delusion with no business becoming logistically accurate. I was supposed to be dancing at the back of the pit. I was happy to be in the room where it happened. Except now I am here, and this is happening right now.
When my close personal friend Harry Styles (shout out to my Gen Z pit neighbors for being so funny) walked onto the stage and waved, I promise you I am not exaggerating, my entire day melted off of me like I was rainbow sprinkles on a beach cone. I could not describe that moment in any other way than disbelief. The culmination of the anticipation of this moment left me utterly enveloped with joy. My body was trembling, but the origin was from my soul and not my brain. When you spend your life in fight or flight, in limerence, daydreaming, you spend so much time imagining those feelings that you forget they can be real. The kind of feeling where your whole body feels lit from the inside.
Every song. Every moment for those two hours. The wheel of emotions was covered for me. We hit them all. I had no idea you could feel exhaustion in a way that didn’t harm you. I laughed. I danced. I sang. I watched musicians have so much fun. Every member of his band was actively joyful, and it was RADIATING from them. The woman on saxophone took my breath away. The dancers’ chemistry? I COULD TASTE IT. The joy from everyone came off the stage in waves. It hit the crowd, and you could feel the room give it right back to them. You could feel how proud they were to perform this show, and it made the whole room feel alive.
The songs. I sing them daily. I know all the words. And somehow, I felt them all for the first time that night. My arms and legs felt electricity running through them during “Dance No More.” I didn’t know he was going to play “Carolina.” My heart popped open the minute I heard those notes. My arm hair stood straight up when he sang the first chorus to “Cinema.” Are you kidding me with literally and figuratively floating during “Satellite” (the floor was bumping). I was crying during “Coming Up Roses” only to begin to feel the most amazing joyful explosion in my chest when I saw a couple get engaged. Watching people in the crowd see him point or wave at them and catching that joy was palpable.
During his final words, my brain started to remind me that we were almost done and then we had to navigate the way back to the hotel and I dropped down to the floor to get a sip of water. I took a breath and reminded myself that I could just be here now because I won’t get to be here again. Harry’s production moment into the final song, “Aperture,” was different, though. As I heard all the sounds come together and realized where the show was going, I locked in and my entire body relaxed. When it was over, I walked out, got into a cab, and went back to the hotel. Buzzing.
Every moment after I heard that first song led me there: to the pit, to that barricade, and to the version of myself I met when I got there.
I had to practice being able to be present. I did it to be a better parent and partner. I never realized it would be an integral part of what I was building inside myself. I do hard things every day, but being present? That has always been the hardest thing for me to do.
When you know better, you do better. I learned how to know myself. I learned how to process my trauma. I learned to forgive the version of myself that masked. I learned to accept the truth of what happened to me. I learned what mattered to me. What made me happy and sad and mad and laugh and cry. I learned that healing isn’t linear and you won’t have the answers sometimes. I learned that no one could take the person you are, despite any attempt they make. I learned that no one needs to understand me or understand my emotions for them to be okay. I can exist as myself with all my feelings and not understand or explain them for everyone’s comfort. What do I like? Who do I want to be around? What kind of things bring me joy? What am I capable of? Enter Harry Styles.
Stress. Relief. Dread. Joy. Anger. Excitement. Anticipation. Frustration. Annoyance. Anxiety. Overwhelm. I felt everything for that moment. And when the lights came up, I floated for the next twelve hours. As I drove home the next morning in silence, my wheels turned about how I could possibly explain what I just experienced.
Except the experience wasn’t seeing Harry Styles. It was meeting a version of me I didn’t realize I was becoming. The version of me that can do hard things. The version of me who loves things so wholly and without shame. The version of me that has these enormously overwhelming emotions about seemingly small things. The version of me that accepts those emotions and doesn’t run from them. The version of me that connected in real time with a human who wrote some of the most beautiful lyrics and music I have ever listened to. The version of me that understands something can be simple on paper and profound in your soul, and that I can hold those two things at the same time while experiencing a moment that reminds me how incredible the life I made really is.
The duality of wanting to experience that night over again but knowing that you can’t catch lightning in a bottle is a bittersweet feeling. Life doesn’t come with a daily transcendent moment; there are only a few of those in everyone’s lifetime. I will never find out I was pregnant with my daughter for the first time again. I don’t get to relive Coach Steve’s doppelgänger marrying me and my best friend at Niagara Falls on the first snowstorm of the season. I can’t go back to the EMDR session that turned my world upside down. These things happened. They are in my past. They don’t happen twice.
The human aspect of this whole experience brings me back into the moment. I thought listening to the songs again would be impossible, but it turns out, it has amplified the music. My memory takes over my body, and my entire nervous system decides to release dopamine in a way that makes me think I am altering my mind chemically. A high I spent my 20s chasing with Mary Jane and Molly and frankly, all their friends — I was able to experience that through a concert, not because the concert replaced them, but because it revealed what my own body could create when I was present enough to receive it. I built the scaffolding myself.
I don’t need to bankrupt myself on resale tickets to every show to keep that night alive. I mean, could I make a compelling emotional argument for doing exactly that? Absolutely. But that is not the point, unfortunately. The point is that I chose something I loved, made it mine, and let myself be embarrassingly sincere about it. I had this transcendent moment at Harry Styles’ Together, Together tour, which is both wild and completely true.
The moment is evidence that I am capable of joy. That I can feel deeply without being destroyed by it. That presence feels better than avoidance.
My body can hold more than trauma.
The songs will take me back every time because I was present inside my body. The euphoria isn’t locked inside Madison Square Garden. It also isn’t a secret that only Harry Styles knows. I didn’t leave anything there. My ability to experience that night was inside of me the entire time.
It truly was just waiting there for me.
