I have social anxiety and just went to a concert for the first time in my life.

I have been dealing with (well, sometimes dealing, sometimes just hiding from) social anxiety for about 4 years now, and I’m slowly getting to know my own limits, when to push them, and when to accept that that’s simply where they are currently. A few months ago Home Free started selling tickets for their Timeless world tour, and seeing as they are one of the two artists I regularly listen to, I immediately put together a group and bought the tickets.

At that time I was doing okay, I felt like my life was heading the right way and I was getting better. Lately, though I’ve been feeling the opposite. In short terms, I’m having a hard time seeing any way that leads to where I want to go, or even forward at all. What this meant was that I was getting really scared of going to the concert. In Denmark, the tickets weren’t just for the Home Free concert but for a two-day festival with names I had never heard of before. On the day Home Free was playing there was one other band called Memphis Boulevard who are supposedly the best country band in Denmark.  Because I’m HSP I’m very particular about the music I listen too, I am very aware of how powerful music can be, and I spend most of my time with words and the impact of a single word, so I’m very careful with what I’ll let myself experience on a subconscious level (and obviously you can’t be consciously aware of everything about a song every time you listen to music). This coupled with the social anxiety and the fact that this was an entirely new experience for me, that it took place far from home where I had no exit strategy, that the tickets said we were to stand up (for like four hours), that the venue was a campsite (think vacation trailer park, not clearing in the woods) – well, let’s just say there were a lot of things about this that pushed my limits, and in ways I had no control over or way to get away from. I was very close to just calling it quits – it’s one thing to push limits when you are feeling good, but when you’re having a bad month and feeling exhausted, it’s quite another. I decided to recruit a friend to come with me so I had some support, and after a few tries, I managed to find someone who wasn’t busy on that day. Between that and obsessively preparing for any circumstances I possibly could (including bringing five folding chairs from home despite only being four people in our group, bringing aspirin, gum, hand sanitizer, extra clothing as well as food and a whole bunch of other stuff you don’t want to need) I managed to find the courage to actually go – perhaps because I didn’t want to ruin it for my cousin, brother, and friend.

We had a couple of hours drive there, but they went by like a dream. We found a parking spot so easily you’d think we’d had help from a fairy – and closer to the entrances than the ordinary spots were. We ate a bit of the food we’d brought, caught up on the songs some of us were unfamiliar with – only my cousin and I were Home Fries before arriving, my brother was just playing chauffeur because I’d paid for his ticket for him, and my friend had never heard of them until I sent her youtube links two weeks before the concert.

My brother got some cash and we went in and was greeted not with an open field and a stage as I had expected, but a tent with tables and chairs and a bar. This not only meant that we had the chance to sit down every now and then, but that people wouldn’t be all squished together to get as close to the stage as possible. We managed to get some decent seats – not too close to the stage where people were sitting closer, but at the top end of a table which meant that we had space on three sides, and since no one came to sit directly behind us, all four sides. I even managed to locate the emergency exit. Our seats weren’t next to a barrier (wall or such) as I usually prefer, so it wasn’t my ideal seats, but honestly, it only took me about an hour or so to forget all about that.

We go up to look at the merch (or just to see who is selling it) and there came the second surprise of the night. A lady in line in front me turns around and tells me that she loves my skirt and asks if I’ve made it myself (yes, I make all my skirts myself). I answered her, and she kept asking questions like how I’d done it, how long it’d taken and so on. Now, the thing to understand about this is that it took place in Denmark, and here we have this little thing called the Law of Jante which is as engraved in us as freedom is in Americans.

For a Dane to actually talk to a complete stranger, to compliment them and carry out a complete conversation, it’s not something you just do here. Here we had the smartphone stare down before the smartphone was a thing; you don’t look at or make eye contact with people you don’t know. So yes, this was just a compliment, but to me, it was like being allowed to throw out the social norms and do the things I actually wanted to do. Furthermore, she actually waited for me to buy a shirt and stopped me again and asked if she could have a picture of my skirt (which is a simple, ankle-length circle skirt made out of old, worn out jeans, it’s not like it’s anything fancy or fashionable). Her request made a second woman ask as well, and before I knew it I was twirling and laughing at the absurdity of it all. At this time Memphis Boulevard (the other band on that evening) were still doing sound tests while people were finishing their dinners – which again just let to a feeling of ‘no perfection needed here, just good fun’ which was further encouraged by all the people who got up and danced in front of the stage when Memphis Boulevard eventually went on for real. They had line dancing and everything.

Our little group of four were sitting at our table laughing and talking and singing along any time a song we recognized came on. It turned out that Memphis Boulevard was actually pretty good, and we really enjoyed listening to them. By the time they had finished and the stage was being cleared of instruments so Home Free could go on I was feeling more excited than anxious, and I actually went to the front and stood in front of the stage with my cousin. My cousin is a mountain, so he could easily see above everyone else, I, however, am not. I was standing on tiptoe and trying to see between people rather than over them, which at times became rather difficult since the elderly couple standing in front of me were kissing each other every five minutes. Happiness, love, and joy all around.

It turned out we weren’t, in fact, waiting for Home Free to go on, there was an extra act that we had known nothing about. This man with a guitar and a beard to outshine Rob’s stepped on stage and asked if anyone of us knew who he was; when someone shouted yes he replied with ‘liar’. He was joining Home Free on the tour for a bit and trying to make the money for a plane ticket home by selling his CDs – which Tim Foust had promised to help with. So while he was playing I went to buy a CD from Tim Foust, and I have to admit I’m not sure which is more exciting: meeting Tim Foust face to face or this CD that I got out of it, because honestly, ever since I put it on for the first time it has been the only thing I’ve been listening to (and it only has five songs). He never introduced himself as far as any of us understood, but the CD says Jeffery East on the cover, and twitter seems to agree that is really him. If you happen to be looking for some good country music I can highly recommend his Roller Rink or Still Crazy, I have had those two stuck in my brain for more than 24 hours now and I am not sick of them yet.

The “orchestra, band, local group” (as the Memphis boulevard lead singer described Home Free) went on only about 45 minutes after the program said they would. Tim made it clear that ‘this isn’t a concert, it’s a party’, and I have to admit I was relieved he sounded okay despite apparently having accepted a homegrown chili from the lead singer of Memphis boulevard. I spend the first few songs up front trying not to get squashed. I did keep my hands up at all times, and always one of them in front of my chest to have a buffer for personal space. I did make myself as small as I could once people started getting closer, I was not comfortable with people bumping into me all the time, but that actually turned out to be easy enough to avoid. Despite that, I did decide to go back to our table where my friend was standing and see if I could see more from further away – which I could. What was more, back there, there was room to dance, so my skirt got a bit of life in it and swooshed around sweeping the floor. I was having fun, I was feeling free, I didn’t care if someone behind me was wishing I would move just an inch to the side, I was yelling ‘yeeha’ despite not drinking beer (Tim kindly translated the country terms for us, like ‘howdy’ meaning ‘how do you do’, ‘yall’ meaning ‘you all’, and ‘yeeha’ being that thing you shout when you want to applaud but you have a beer in both hands. Unfortunately, he never explained ‘Hillbilly bone’, so I guess I will have to look that one up). They put on quite a show, and we all sang along to every song – which apparently Americans don’t do with their original songs. I was a party and one that I actually enjoyed.

To be quite honest, Home Free was the least memorable thing about the night – and that is not a discredit to them, it is a ‘yeeha’ to their fans, my little group, the surprise performance by Jeffery East, and all the other small things that just played right. Despite my fears in the days and weeks leading up to the event, this concert ended up being the first time in a long time I felt happy and didn’t feel guilty about enjoying myself. Sometimes what we fear the most can be the biggest blessings.

Out of the four of us in the group, I ended up having an anxiety-free night, my brother practically fell in love with Tim’s voice and humor (later describing him as ‘someone I wouldn’t mind spending an evening with drinking beer’), my friend, despite not being the dancing in public type, ended up waving her fingers a little and stomping and clapping along with Hillbilly Bone, and my cousin, I think, just had an amazing night like he had expected to. If I’m completely honest I’ve also gotta admit it was pretty funny seeing the friend who decided not to join and telling him I met Tim Foust – he is now seriously reevaluating his life choices it seems.

I’ll say it one last time, just to let it really sink in, both for myself and anyone else out there dealing with anxiety: I enjoyed a night out. I had fun. I didn’t have a panic attack. I didn’t feel judged. I had fun, and I didn’t feel guilty about it. Home Free is an amazing band (orchestra), but there was a group there more awesome than them, and that was the Home Fries.

So with all that, if anyone at all made it to the end of this, there’s just one thing left to say: mental illness doesn’t necessarily have to hold you back. Small steps, good surroundings, and a little bit of courage and anything is possible.