Impact! (Ouch)

Last night, my sister and I saw 30 Seconds to Mars and Linkin Park in concert.  If you don’t know who 30 Seconds to Mars is, it’s fronted by Jared Leto who won an Oscar for “Dallas Buyers Club”.  If you don’t know who Linkin Park is, the best I can tell you is that they’ve done some music for the Transformer movies and they were one of the first – if not the first – to incorporate electronic music with rap.

At one point during the 30 STM set, Jared Leto came out into the audience to do a few acoustic songs; I’ve seen them three or four times now and this is his typical thing to do mid-set.  He played a song called ‘Attack’; it is the best F-You song that I have ever heard and I used to sing it (no, scream it) in my car when Rob and I had broken up years ago.  And hearing it acoustically, with just his vocals, almost made it new to me.  It hit a whole new emotional chord because I was hearing it from a new perspective; I was hearing it with more raw emotion in his voice than what’s on the CD and I was hearing it remembering what it was like to truly feel those words he was singing and it was a hard memory to process with that emotion coming through loud and clear on the gigantic speakers. He also sang ‘Alibi’ which basically says things suck, but they’ll get better, there is a better road ahead.  Both songs hit me in a way that I didn’t expect and that hadn’t happened before.  And it happened again later in the night during Linkin Park’s set when they sang ‘Shadow of the Day’ and another song that right now, its title eludes me but it doesn’t really matter….both made me feel more than they have in the past, and it’s because of where my life is now.

I am constantly surprised that, even now seven months into this rest of my life process, my mom’s passing has changed my perspective and how things impact me.  ‘Shadow of the Day’ has always been a sad song, ‘Alibi’ has always had it’s sad components, but neither ever made me cry until last night.  Sitting or standing there, listening to the lyrics live and really feeling them just made me look to the sky (well the roof of the amphitheater) and think “I miss you”.  I know she would laugh at me as she asked how last night was, since she has no clue who those bands are or what they sing. Had no clue, that is.  Even in the middle of a rock concert with flashing lights, blaring drums and electronics, people dancing and jumping all around me having the time of their lives, I am reminded of the fact that she is no longer here and I feel alone in a crowd of thousands.