Lost Track Narrative

As the sound waves carried the words off stage and into my ears, I became comfortable for the first time in my life. My fears of vast crowds and booming noises seemed to whittle away as the venue filled with lyrics. The night I saw Florence and the Machine on stage was not only the starting point for my love of music, but also the beginning of my journey understanding who I was. Fourteen. Fourteen was the amount of times that I had been stepped on by the stranger next to me. I was keeping track because that's what I did. My mind was always occupied with the minutiae of everyday life in an effort to distract myself from constant worries. At the age of fifteen, I was an introvert in every sense of the word. People scared me, or at least that's what I told everyone as a euphuism for anxiety problems. But, as Florence and the Machine walked onto the stage, I somehow lost track. I lost track of how many times the brunette next to me's hair fell on my shoulder, and how many times I was pushed. My mind was silent, as

Her natural frequency was not breaking glasses; it was breaking me, releasing me from the chains that were my thoughts. Personal anxieties were my enemies, but they were what defined me. Over-thinking how I looked and what I said was something I got used to over the years. Florence and the Machine set me free. All my mind was focused on was the ethereal noises I heard leaving center stage. I found myself dancing, something I dreaded at family parties. I also found myself singing in public, something I was terrified of doing outside of my shower. My fears were not my fears anymore; they were a separate entity I no longer identified with. I was not worrying about my past or future, but instead on my present, and my present was beautiful. All my inner counting halted after that night except for one: my concert tally, which will soon hit