Blogocentric Formulations

One Sweet Day

DAY 3

"One Sweet Day"
by Mariah Carey feat. Boyz II Men

This is only my third entry for Emotionally Raw week here at the Soundtrackers, but I'm gonna bring out the heavy guns. This is probably the single most painful song in my life, one that I literally turn off or skip whenever it plays. Hell, even loading up the video for this challenge and hearing the first few beats of the music was like a knife twisting in my gut.

I spent most of middle school (and high school) crushing on one girl in particular. I was also painfully shy, quite literally a wallflower. I would go to school dances but never detach my back from the wall of the gym. I'd go to pep rallies, but plant my butt in a bleacher seat in the far back corner and watch everyone else participate. Well, a friend of mine thought it would be funny to ask the girl I liked to dance. And yep, it was to this song. He teased me about being too shy to ask her to dance myself and said, "Well if you won't, I will!" And proceeded to do just that.

Now, the older me can look back on the situation and realize that it was just stupid junior high bullshit. But everybody remembers those formative years of "firsts" in their life and this was my first time being jealous of someone for being more outgoing and courageous than I was at the time... and it would ultimately be the first time that I lost a friend over something. I was just so hurt, so traumatized that I couldn't hang out with this friend anymore. And to this day, even though that was more than twenty years ago, and I haven't spoken to either the girl or the friend in nearly that long, hearing this song will take me right back to that middle school gymnasium and all the swirling pain and emotions that I felt that night.

It's strange how vibrant some memories are. We can have trouble remembering what we had for dinner the night before, or what we did last weekend, but other memories are just as vivid as they were the day we imprinted them in our brains. I have a feeling this song will forever leave me emotionally raw when I hear it.

-------------------------
Written for "The Soundtrack of Your Life"