That was the summer that I began to realize that love only comes to you when you stop looking for it in others and instead start giving it to yourself. That was the summer that I realized that adulthood isn’t the trophy that comes after crossing the finish line at the end of a marathon, but instead a perpetual Mile 20, where you sink into the idea that this very well may last forever and even though your legs and your sphincter are about to betray you in front of all of these cheering idiots, all you’re allowed to do is keep running. Do whatever you want and whatever you love because tomorrow is another day of sunshine. Even though the old wood floors in their apartment are overpacked with feet and chair legs and table legs and a few pet legs, it’s okay because all the doors and windows are open, and it feels like the air is a guest at the party who brought everyone’s favorite beer and a playlist full of the songs that everyone knows the words to. The same neighbors that helped you push your car out of the snow in the alley are now having a party on their balcony and they don’t know your name but you’re absolutely invited. The end of last summer was so long ago that no one really remembers what it feels like, but here we are, already on the other side of it. The moment the bars in Wicker Park roll up their garage-door windows for the first time, the attitude of the city changes. That summer, I learned exactly why millions of real humans who can definitely feel the cold choose to suffer through months of snow, trapped cars with icy windows, slippery or salty sidewalks, wet gloves, and layers and layers and layers and never enough layers.Ĭhicago in the summer is a literal paradise.

I bought them after my final interview for said job, because I had been walking around Chicago in my dress shoes and my feet were starting to blister. They were Vans with a funky green pattern on them. I had just started my first grown-up job after college. She had graciously allowed me to crash in her extra bedroom on a futon near campus for two weeks before my new lease in Wrigleyville started and her roommates moved back in. I never went to the school, but I was staying with a friend of a friend.

I was standing on the L platform at Loyola. When I first heard “Sour Patch Kids” by Bryce Vine, it was the summer of 2015.

Moments of true happiness, when I feel completely content with a moment and my place in it, are the beginnings of my life’s chapters, my Table of Contents just a list of songs and albums that bring me right back to a chosen moment without fail. I think this may be true for anyone who, like me, has an inconsistent relationship with happiness and has headphones in their ears most of their waking moments. Listening to music is a form of time travel for me.

Sour patch kids song