Best Night Ever

I'm relatively certain that tonight was, by far, the best night of my life. As some of you readers (all two of you) may know, I'm desperately in love with all things Marianas Trench. I found out a while back that they were coming to the United States--as they are a Canadian band--and I bought tickets for their show in Columbus, Ohio, the day that they went on sale. Tonight was the night of their concert, and, Readers, I must say it was epic!

Josh Ramsay is pretty sure Mike Ayley's hair is awful.

Same picture, different angle. I like this one better, I think.

First, Josh and Mike did a signing at the F.Y.E. in the Columbus mall. Kaitlin and I went early to be sure that we got to meet them, which we did. We were the second people in line, and I got all my stuff signed, including an awesome necklace that Kaitlin gave me just before the concert. If you don't believe roommate love is possible, visit Kaitlin and I for a while. It's love up in this bitch. Love.

Perfect for the occasion!

I also took a picture with the guys.

Please ignore how utterly pasty I look when compared to regular people.

After the signing was over, we headed to the venue to wait to see the show. We had to park way out in the boondocks because we couldn't find a place to park near the venue. (We were later informed by a friend we happened to make at the signing that there was a parking garage literally across the street from the venue. Balls!) We ended up parking in front of some residence. Kaitlin almost stepped on a dead rat when she got out of her car. It was unpleasant, to say the least. We waited outside in the cold with our friends from the F.Y.E. signing for an hour and a half at least, but then we finally made it inside.

The show was amazing. Josh Ramsay sings live in the same way that he sings on his albums. Mike Ayley, Matt Webb, and Ian Casselman were all amazing. They sounded so great! Lots of bands can be utterly disappointing live, but not Marianas Trench. The crowd was excited and knew a surprising amount of words to the songs. They played a five song set including (in no particular order): "All To Myself," "Cross My Heart," "Celebrity Status," "Shake Tramp," and "Beside You." It was wonderful!

Kaitlin and I left after Marianas Trench was done playing. The walk back to the car had us walking past an alley that was in the back of the venue, and I begged Kaitlin to go down with me to see if the band was outside. Just my luck, they were! After begging Kaitlin to walk further down and talk with them with me, I eventually left her side to talk to Josh Ramsay solo.

The talk that I had with him was amazing. You know that feeling that you get when you really want to meet someone and you just know it's going to be awesome? I had that feeling all day. Josh Ramsay is every bit as accommodating and cool as he seems like he ought to be. We chatted about their tour, about how I introduced my dorm friends to their music, and about sobriety, which was amazing. He was totally understanding. He asked me if I was going to meetings (A.A. for those of you that don't speak fuck-up), and he suggested that I go to them because they can be really supportive. When I asked, he made a little video to greet my friends at the dorms. When I asked, he gave me a hug, which was pretty much perfect. He thanked me for coming out to the show, and I thanked him for the awesome music.

I really don't know what to say other than that it was truly awesome to be able to converse with my favorite person. I don't think that there would have been a more ideal way for me to meet Josh or for things to go down. It was really nice to be able to talk to him about sobriety especially and to know that he understands where I'm coming from with it. It was also nice to hear him support me when there are people in my life right now that know me and don't even offer me support. (In fact, I've been told I'm going to fail. More than once. I've also been told that "Jessica plus alcohol equals a good time." Winners, all around.)

On the way home, we got lost. The good part is that we were only lost for a little while. The GPS malfunctioned, but Kaitlin had a GPS system on her phone. We made it back in one piece and incredibly happy.

Marianas Trench will definitely not lose their place as my favorite band. They've earned it for sure. And Josh Ramsay has my loyalty for sure. Today makes me feel like things are finally turning around for me, like things might be looking up for me in life. Maybe it's because this is my 77th day sober--lucky 7's. Maybe my life is going to be better than it seems. So, Readers, before I gush any more about my amazing night, I leave you with this lovely video.

Let's Be Sobering

Lately, I've been struggling with some issues. I think maybe it's time to hold myself accountable for them. It seems that I have a problem: I cannot say no when it comes to alcohol. I need to quit drinking. Let me explain.

Let's start from the beginning. I've been drinking since I was probably 15 years old, which means that I have a solid decade of drinking under my belt. Only four of those years have been legal for me. I'd love to say that my sordid affair with alcohol ends there, but it does not. I've made terrible choices under the influence. I've said terrible things to friends, thrown myself at people (male and female alike), driven drunk (I can't even say enough how lucky I am that I've never had a DUI or worse). There are large chunks of evenings that I just don't remember, and this hasn't happened once or twice. Lately, it's happened every time I've started to drink. Once I start, I don't stop. Because of alcohol, I've lied and stolen. Alcohol has made me indifferent to the destructive tendencies of my friends, and I'm ashamed to say that I've stood by drinking when sober me would never have allowed certain behaviors around me to prevail. I will tell myself that I need to stay sober for a night, and then, I drink anyways.

I'd been thinking about committing to sobriety a lot lately. What was my wake up call this week, you ask? A friend brought over some Jim Beam--a brand and type of alcohol that I cannot stand--and some of it spilled when we put it in the fridge. It spilled on my fingers, and smelling it on my hands made me want to drink it. I actually salivated. To tell the truth, I did drink later that night, though it was not the Jim Beam. But the fact that an alcohol that I previously found more or less abhorrent seemed attractive to me simply because it was alcohol gave me pause. I didn't realize how often I crave alcohol until I thought about it. When something's happening, I want to drink--good or bad. When nothing's happening, I want to drink. When I'm angry or upset, I want to drink. When I'm happy, I'm always down to drink.

To be perfectly candid, it scares the hell out of me. Seeing the addiction on both sides of my family has shown me what I'm possibly headed for. More than that, I'm tired of being that girl that has to apologize for everything. Sorry I threw myself at you. Sorry I broke that. Sorry I said fuck your face. Sorry I told everyone your business. Sorry I flashed your whole party my boobs. These are not normal behaviors! They're not!

As of now, I'm two days sober, but I'm so afraid to fail. I've thought about AA or something, but I feel like I'd be laughed out of those places. I've never gotten a DUI. I've never lost anything because of my idiocy related to alcohol. I just can't keep living with myself when I'm living like this. I'm probably going to speak to someone at our college's counseling center in the next few weeks. For now, I'm just trying to gain enough footing here to be able to say that I can say no.

Amusingly, I had a dream that I was trying to learn how to be sober, and I asked Josh Ramsay, my Marianas Trench love, what it takes to be sober. He answered me honestly, and gave me some Yoda-like personal advice. Then, I dreamed that he hung out with me while other people drank around us and tried to help me to resist. I woke up feeling like a failure. I'll be seeing Marianas Trench live in February, but I don't think I'll be asking Josh Ramsay for advice on sober living. It might be weird.

I don't really even want anyone to know that I'm struggling with these things. I've always told myself that I'm stronger than this. There's a little bit of a shame to not being able to control myself and my impulses. I definitely don't want my family to know. I feel like this would be much easier if I never told anyone. Sadly, I know that that can never be. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was going to put it off. I need some inner-strength first.

The weirdest part of my sober dream was that I woke up hungry. How is that fair? My subconscious wants me to make good choices, but my body prefaces this by making me hungry. I'd really love it if I didn't gain a bunch of weight while trying to forge a healthier lifestyle. I'm already fat enough, thank you, Universe. Also, if we talk (face to face), let's never speak of this. At least, not until I'm comfortable with where I'm at. Give me that at least.

Day Nine: Someone You Wish You Could Meet

First of all, 100th blog post here on Blogger! This means I get to have a party, right?

Today's letter-writing excursion is a view into a secret desire of mine, the subject of which is someone that I wish I could meet. It will be easier to do this in an essay format, so this will be a bit of a deviation from my letter format. I assure you, you'll get over it.

Anyone that knows me is well aware that my tastes change with the wind, the tides, the seasons, the positions of the moon, etc. I'm an incredibly fickle person. When you think about it, I'm really the ideal capitalist consumer because I get into something, throw all my attention and money at it, and then lose interest when the next sweet new thing comes along. I would like the credit for not being a mindless consumer, though. All of my choices serve a purpose--even if that purpose doesn't dip much deeper that just catering to me. But I digress...

Needless to say, because of my shifting predilections, I tend to cycle through musical groups rather quickly. I stick to some genre specifics, but apart from that, my musical choices are varied and strange. AW, as many of you regular readers (all two of you) are aware, recently introduced me to Marianas Trench. I immediately fell in love with the band. Their lyrics are poignant and perceptive, and my introduction to their songs couldn't have come at a more fitting time in my life. So many of their songs seem to be the perfect voice to what I'm feeling and going through right now. I feel like their lyrics are ripped from the pages of my heart, rather than from the pages of the songwriter's journal.

Getting to the point, the mastermind behind all this great music that I've grown so attached to is Josh Ramsay, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the band. Josh Ramsay is the person that I would choose to meet if I could meet anyone. Now, I realize that this may seem like a shady thing to say coming from a self-professed flake--you know, you really shouldn't take away your own credibility before you make a point, as I have done in this post--but I would make that choice again and again even if I stopped listening to Marianas Trench every day. Let me tell you why.

First, I have immense amounts of respect for a man that can admit his past to thousands of fans, rather than sweeping it under the rug and pretending as though it never happened. He was an addict and a bulimic, and is in recovery now. One of his songs in particular, Lover Dearest, is about his personal struggles with heroin and was written as part of a treatment program at a rehab facility. This is something that he regularly shares with his fans before playing that song. This says a lot about the sincerity of the music that he writes. I think that kind of sincerity is glaringly absent from most of the people who are in the music industry these days.

More than that, I have an incredible amount of respect for recovering addicts. It's hard enough to turn your life around, harder still in the face of addiction. The addiction of an immediate member of my family is something that we have struggled with since I was eight years old, and I'm twenty-four now--it will be something that affects my life for the rest of it, and there's no changing that. Lest you think that it's not a miracle for people to get clean and stay that way, I can tell you from personal experience that it's one of the most emotional, difficult, and worthwhile things to choose to do. We are not lucky enough to have an addict who chooses to be in recovery. I can respect any one that chooses life over death because, trust, it is a choice.

In addition, Marianas Trench as a band has a real commitment to their fans. They are quite present on almost all social media outlets. Their street team has the ability to win special prizes from the band just for doing the things that street teams would usually do. Hell, just the other day I got all stoked because Josh replied to one of my tweets on Twitter (seriously, I was way too excited for words; it's a good thing that no one saw me because I would have seemed like a total fangirl). There are hundreds of YouTube clips of the band interacting with the fans or chatting with the crowd from the stage. I can honestly say, having had many a disappointing concert experience, this is a valuable quality. It's no wonder that their fans, "Trench Wenches" as they are called, are so committed to them and so crazy about them.

Another other thing that AW and I both agree is great about Josh Ramsay is his sense of humor. Even though he's been through so much and attained fame, he doesn't seem like he takes himself too seriously. Once again, YouTube is littered with videos of him telling fans amusing stories or of him saying something amusing at the lens of some one's camera phone. One of my personal favorites--which makes me laugh every single time I see it--is a video of him proclaiming that he's a douche bag. (Also, as a side note, if you're looking to harbor illegal immigrants, Josh, I'm open to being harbored. Just sayin'!

Really, the whole band just seems like a group of really great guys. They seem like the kind of dudes that you'd always invite to your parties because they're all genuinely nice people. I mean, someone could show me video evidence that Josh Ramsay slaughters the unborn, and I would be reluctant to believe it because he seems like such a cool guy.

There's really so much more that I could say about why I would want to meet Josh Ramsay. I'd love to ask him a thousand questions about music and about life. I don't think meeting Josh Ramsay would be quite enough for me, though. I'd want to get to know him. I'd want to sit around with him, have a Coke Zero (which is consequently the only diet soda that does not give me headaches), and talk about anything. More than that, I'd want him to want to get to know me--maybe because I feel like, because of his music, he knows me so well already.

I realize that I'm probably no different from hundreds of other fans. It is completely unoriginal to want to meet your favorite musician. I'm okay with that. (See? This is me, learning how to be sincere again. Obviously, it will be a long road back to not caring what people think of me.) It doesn't hurt to agree with the majority every now and again.

Josh, keep doing whatever you're doing. It's working for us. Thanks for all the music and for being who you are. I hope you know that some of your fans really love and appreciate you for it. And please tour in the U.S. soon (specifically Toledo, Ohio).

Internet Recognition

I need to share my triumph with the Internet. Many of you are aware of my new love for the band Marianas Trench. AW got me interested in them when we were talking about music one day, and I have been very into them ever since. I absolutely love their music. I'm really saddened by the fact that their CDs haven't been released in the U.S. yet, but there's a release date set, so I can pre-order them when I get some cash. (My little brother blames this recent love of Marianas Trench on my being a "Canadaphile." I'm pretty sure he made that word up.)

Anyways, I've been a Twitter twat for a little while now. I've noticed that the most frustrating thing about Twitter is that, while you can tweet your little fingers off at celebrities, band members, and persons of note all you'd like, they very seldom reply to your tweets. This doesn't deter me, but it's kind of emblematic of how the world works. There's even a very funny YouTube video about this phenomenon.

Well, the lead singer of Marianas Trench, Josh Ramsay, is on Twitter. In fact, the band members often make a point of keeping up with fans on Twitter, which is really great. It's important to connect with your fan base. And tonight, Josh Ramsay connected with me.

Suck it, Internet!

What does this mean? This means that Josh Ramsay is aware that I have a presence on this Earth. That may seem really stupid, but it pleases me to no end. Also, this is the first time that a celebrity has actually replied to one of my tweets. I'm pretty stoked about that false sense of importance. It doesn't hurt that he Internet-laughed at my comment, either. The Internet is pretty fuckin' cool, when you think about it.

Now if I could just get them to tour in Toledo, Ohio, we'd be all set! Fingers crossed, people!