Wish you were here

When I was 18 and first learning what music I liked (I spent my youth obsessed with contemporary Christian music. The only thing I knew otherwise was Counting Crows), I often played this song over and over once it got dark.

I hadn't yet kissed a girl.

Back then, I lived in a dorm room that was nearly completely wood. I played all music off a black Dell desktop on a Winamp player. That winter, I kissed a boy in the dark of my bedroom while this song played. A week or two later, I kissed a girl while listening to the same song. Kissing the girl was so. so. much better.

It was only a few months later that I told my mom in the church bathroom on Easter Sunday that I liked girls. That was an awful year -- a year spent crying in the stairs behind my dorm, a year of whispering pleas to God, a year of confused journal entries, a year of kissing boy after boy hoping to change it all. But in the darkness, listening to a classic song that was still new to me, I was only happy.