History Unfolding
If I had predicted in the first week of school what component of my fifth semester would be kind of life-changing, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed it to be an assigned YouTube video from an asynchronous history class. But thanks to a few sentences spoken out of a face I’ll probably never see, I was taught that I’ve likely always been a little bit off about every single thing.
As I was misguided to think prior to a week or so ago, “history” is not a linear accumulation of faceless facts that are meant to be memorized and forgotten (see: public school exam preparation). History is alive with its allowance of elastic angles, arguments, and assumptions all required to be based on the analysis of true events, yes, but it exists in the present arguably even more than in the past. What do I mean? Well, events have a start and an end, a limited number of people or products that are primary sources; it’s the interpretation of the aftermath that is so infinite. This is history.
So, what about not understanding the true definition of history has to do with me? I’m happy to share that it goes a bit deeper than making a “her-story” pun, but the truth is a bit more personal. Because of this new understanding, I realized I struggle with my own interpretation of Shyla. Some days I see her stand tall, and other days I see she can’t stand herself. Whatever I think of her though is corrupted by the historian of that particular day, and today I, the historian, want to tell you the history of what happened to her yesterday.
Last night one of my worst fears unfolded at a jam session. In a crowded room with no less than twenty peers of mine at this particular event, I went up to walk a Bb blues at a tempo you’d get cut to call “fast”. In under five choruses, my right forearm had tensed up and swollen so bad that a person who knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t take his gesture to take over as an insult, and thank God he did. Truly I was dying up there. My middle and pointer finger conspired against the rest of me to create the worst few minutes of my adult life in public (a specific title, but if you know me, accurate).
The Shyla of yesterday had a terrible night. She experienced failure and frustration publicly in front of a crowd she thought would never respect her as a player again, and she sank into her own self-pity as her mind ran away with a thousand negative thoughts. This is the account she would give you if you asked her what had happened to her that night.
But today, again if I’m to be my own historian, I not only see it all differently but I seek to remember it all differently in my own little self-history. I can’t seem to remember any accounts of anyone saying anything to me post-“jam” that wasn’t a simple “Are you okay?” I also can’t seem to remember any glances or glares. I remember sympathy, I remember laughter, I remember hugs. I remember not thinking about it an hour later while I watched a great movie.
All it really was was a moment that meant a lot to me and nothing to everyone else in the room. It was only for me to make this mistake, to chew on it, to learn from it, and to adapt from it so that it doesn’t happen again. At first I just wanted to lie in my own grave about it and bury myself, but it’s the clarity I got today that has inspired me to memorialize it in a blog instead.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF October 12, 2025: The First of Many Great Failures to Come.
Inscription: The Shyla of Yesterday’s account is fact, but the Shyla of Today’s interpretation is true.
