Of the few German words I know, only one really matters.

I wasn't planning on blogging today. 

Really, I wasn't even thinking about blogging until sometime after our last show on Sunday. Maybe on next Wednesday, or something, after I'd settled in back home and started to process this giant, indescribable bundle of feelings that has begun to slowly tangle over the past few days.

But, I just finished sending a facebook message to my friend, Sarah, who is coming to our show in Wautoma this Saturday. And before I knew it, I found myself rereading the entire message history between me and Sarah going all the way back to January 2006. There were all sorts of inside jokes about which I had forgotten and countless reminders of why we were such great friends. I'm sure some of you have had similar experiences. It's a weird thing, seeing all that you've shared with a really close friend through many years.

Sarah was the friend in whom I confided everything during the long, arduous process of auditioning for Barrage. She was there in the very beginning, when I first sent in my e-mail of interest. She took my very first headshots. She helped me draft e-mails to the managers. She spent countless hours with me and my parents discussing the what-ifs of auditioning for or joining Barrage. 

Sarah, simply and selflessly, did the most important thing a friend can do: invest.

Quite poetically, the first show Sarah will get to see is my second to last. She was there in the beginning, and six years later, she'll be here at the end.

This is when the Sehnsucht started. And whenever I think of Sehnsucht, I instantly think of my English class during my senior year of high school, when I first learned the term which I understand to mean an intense yearning or longing for the past. I haven't written much about my time in high school on this blog, but suffice it to say that I loved high school. A lot. Many of my best friends today were in that English class. Coincidentally, the word Sehnsucht has become so inextricably tied to memories of high school that even thinking of it in passing often triggers its onset.

Then, I started browsing my facebook news feed and saw photos of today's graduation ceremonies at ASU.

...as if this afternoon hadn't already become heavy enough! 

When I started this entry, I wasn't really sure why I was writing or where I was going. I merely felt compelled to write. I now realize I needed to capture this odd sense of longing that I'm somehow already feeling for a thing which has yet to cease.

Is there a German word for that, too? A pre-Sehnsucht Sehnsucht?

Five more shows.