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p4yjuh · 2 years

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A Weekend I’ll Never Forget

First I want to pay tribute to everyone who lost their lives this past weekend: John Hilgert, Brianna Rodriguez, Jacob Jurinek, Franco Patiño, Axel Acosta, Rudy Peña, Madison Dubiski, & Danish Baig. My thoughts and condolences truly go out to their friends & families because I am sure no death hurts more than one that was preventable, especially at the hands of negligence.

Honestly I expected this to be a weekend I would never forget regardless, but the turn of events that made it truly unforgettable are still hard for me to truly grasp my head around. Part of me thinks that maybe I should’ve seen the warning signs from this trip early on. From my roommate, Morgan, mistyping her email when we bought the tickets, to when we completely forgot what house they were going to get sent to, and to us barely making our connecting flight (running full speed through the Denver airport will really humble you). Even after we landed in Houston and begrudgingly paid $70 for a taxi to our hotel, to our surprise we found out that we couldn’t check in till 3pm the next day. This mainly came as a shock to us because Morgan called ahead of time and explained that our flight landed at midnight and whoever was on the phone with her said that that was okay and we would still be able to check in. Which was clearly a lie according to the man at the front desk who was being an asshole about the situation and literally told us to sleep on the streets. As two 19 year old girls in a new city traveling alone for the first time we were obviously horrified, especially considering it was 1 am and we flew all the way from Indiana so we truly were stranded. Luckily Morgan had been on Tinder before we came out to Houston and asked a guy she had been snapping if we could stay with him for the night. Staying with a guy from Tinder in a city you’ve never been in is certainly not an ideal or even close to preferred method of having a roof over your head, but in this situation beggars really could not be choosers. Thankfully he wasn’t some psycho killer waiting to strike, he was honestly one of the nicer people we encountered during our stay in Houston. The next day we were finally able to check into a different hotel, get ready, and bust ass to get to Astroworld since we were arriving a lot later than what we anticipated. We got there as right before Don Toliver started and had just enough time to get a drink, and squeeze through the crowd to attempt to get a decent spot. I knew to expect moshing and tight crowds, with this being my first music festival and basically the second time I had ever been at a rap concert, but the crowd for Don was a lot more aggressive than I had been anticipating. Morgan and I held onto each others hands damn near for dear life, and I did the most to make sure I wasn’t going to get knocked off balance and fall. We ended up leaving early to get more to drink and to walk around/explore, but even when we came back for Roddy Rich people were still trying to mosh and be overly aggressive for no reason. But with this being my first festival I just hashed it out to all of this being normal. Most people left after Lil Baby but Morgan and I had to see SZA, which we actually got pretty close to the stage for. SZA being one of our favorite artists, it was definitely the highlight of my night finally seeing her live. After SZA we walked over to the stage that Travis was performing at and took the extra time we had to sit and recharge since it was the first time all day we really had an actual break and we were absolutely exhausted and dehydrated. We didn’t get back up until Travis was finally on stage and the music started to which we walked over to the crowd. But we weren’t pressed on getting anywhere close to the stage because we were already exhausted and it was packed. Yet around two songs in everyone in the crowd was getting pushed backwards, so hard to the point where I fell down. Thankfully the people around me helped me get back up, but I had lost Morgan. We were with a group of people we had met earlier in the day, so we were evenly split up, so at least neither of us were actually alone. I spent the rest of the concert stressing about finding her (Because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy with how many people were there, not to mention my lack of service and my phone being at its last limb) but still at least trying to enjoy the show while I could. After the show ended we were able to find each other and finally head back to our hotel. Once we were back and I was able to get on my phone I had a snapchat from a friend saying “Are you guys okay?!?!?” to which prompted my confusion until he said people had died. At first neither of us really believed it. Yeah it was kinda intense but neither of us saw anything that seemed too out of the ordinary and when we tried to look it up online there was nothing official to really confirm it. Until there was, and it was true. We spent the rest of the night refreshing our feeds to hear more about what had happened. Which was the craziest part to me, I have seen some truly horrible videos about what happened at Astroworld and it’s hard for me to believe that thats the same event we were at. Then the guilt sets in, because we truly had no idea any of this was going on while we were there having fun, which I hate saying but we really did have fun, the one part of our shit trip that was actually going according to plan-until it wasn’t anymore. Knowing that we were there and couldn’t do anything to help has been eating at me. But just to explain the sheer size of how big Astroworld really was, the video of the ambulance in the crowd? Couldn’t see it at all from where we were during Travis, which is insane to me because the lights alone on that vehicle make it pretty easy to spot out. Then of course I start thinking about how basically any decision we made that night more or less saved our lives, like what if we didn't SZA’s set, or didn't take a break as long as we did before Travis? We would've gotten closer to the stage and therefore putting our lives at risk and not even knowing. Which is another unsettling thing to realize, either me or Morgan could have died during Travis and we would have had no idea since we were already separated, which is truly sickening. It’s still crazy to me that when I say “I survived Astroworld” I mean it literally and not figuratively. It’s crazy to think I attended a mass casualty event, something that won’t be forgotten easily. I have been through a lot of trauma in my life, but this is the first traumatic event I’ve been through thats been publicized at a national level, something that everyone and their mom has an opinion about. Due to that, I have been trying to limit my media usage the past couple of days because it really is overwhelming to be constantly reminded about something I could have potentially died at. In the end I know my story isn’t as impactful or telling of the tragedies that happened on Friday as others have been, but it is still my story that I have to live with and figured it might as well be worth the share. Not as much for others as it is for myself. We take so many things in life for granted, for me this weekend it was coming home safe. I am so eternally grateful that Morgan and I are okay. Please don’t forget to tell your loved ones how much you love them on a regular basis.

#astroworld #astrofest #travisscott #travis scott

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