My Biggest Takeaway from Electric Forest This Year Was Finding True Love

(A story in multiple parts - The conclusion)

To this day, I still can’t believe that everything happened the way that it did, especially the magic of the previous day. Nothing like that had ever happened to me in all my years of raving, and going into Electric Forest this year I wasn’t even looking for anything like that, I was fully intending on spending the entire festival with my friends old and new at Camp Rabbit Hole. The Rave Gods, it seems, had other plans for me because they knew better than I did what I really needed to find at the festival this year.

I woke up on that Monday, departure day, sad that it was all coming to an end as I saw parts of our group camp had already been taken down and some people had already left. As soon as I got situated and I accepted that it really was time for us to start thinking about packing our stuff up, I got a text from Luke telling me I should come over to his camp to hang out with him until it was time to leave. It was around that time that my best friend Hudson came up to me asking for the keys to our rental and the first chapter of our whole nightmare of our journey home began. After his revelation about the key situation, I was so frustrated that I just left and headed straight for Luke’s camp.

When I got to Luke’s camp, I saw that it was also in the process of being torn down and that several of their friends had also already taken off. Luke came and hugged me and said “I can’t believe this is it, it’s really over and we’re all going home now.” I agreed and told him that I was really glad that he and I got to spend basically the entire festival together and that our connection was so strong and so real.

“Out of all my years of raving, I’ve never met anyone like you and I’ve never had this kind of connection with anyone I’ve ever met. You really are the most significant rave friend I’ve ever had, and I’ll always cherish you because of that,” I told him.

“Really? You really mean that?” he asked.

“Of course Luke, I’m never gonna forget you or the memories we made together at Electric Forest this year, and I really hope that our friendship lasts for a very very long time,” I replied. “I better see you again next year or I’m going to be very sad.”

He looked at me and said, “Well why do we have to wait until next year to see each other again? I wanna come out to Utah to see you before then, if that’s cool with you.”

A smile from ear to ear shot across my face and I said "Dude, for real?!? You’d come out to Utah just to see me?!?”

“Of course I would, I really want to! Let’s make a plan for it sometime,” he said, and the huge smile on his face told me all I needed to know.

“Hell yeah,” I told him. “You better come. That’s gonna be so epic to see you again and get to hang out with you and show you around Salt Lake City!”

We hung out for a while at his camp, and then he said that he was hungry but there wasn’t any food left at his camp because everything had been packed away or the people with all the other food had already left. So I told him we should go back to my camp because we still had so much food left and I was certain we could find something for him to eat over there. He said “Ok then let’s go!” And off we went back to Camp Rabbit Hole in search of food.

We got to camp and I foraged around the campsite for whatever food was left out for everyone, and grabbed as much of it as I could for Luke. We hung out at my camp for a while and then Luke got a text from Christian saying that he had locked his keys inside his car, so Luke asked me if I wanted to follow him back to his camp to see what the deal was and try to figure things out over there. I told him of course I’d follow him and spend as much time as possible with him since it was the very last time we were gonna get to spend with each other until he comes to Utah, so we made our way over.

We ended up having to call a tow truck service to get Christian’s door unlocked, so Christian stayed behind at their camp to start breaking down their tent and pack up the rest of their gear, and Luke and I walked around the group camping area to look for a way to get some help for their situation. It was a nice final time for just the two of us to spend time with each other and bond before this magical dream of Electric Forest finally came to an end.

When we finally got a hold of a tow truck company, they set up a meeting place to pick us up, and Luke and I had to walk all the way to the other end of the campgrounds to meet the tow truck driver. It was one last adventure for us and it was really hot and the sun was blazing high up above us, but we made the best of the situation and things weren’t too bad because at least we were together enjoying each other’s company through the misery of the heat.

We met up with the tow truck driver and he took us all the way back to the camp and got Christian’s door unlocked for him. I helped Luke finish packing up his tent and the rest of his stuff and he and Christian stowed it away into the car, and we hung out at the campsite for a while. Eventually, Christian decided that it was time for them to take their chances and get into the ridiculously long car line, knowing full well that they would probably be waiting in it for several hours. Luke wanted to stay a bit longer, but Christian was pretty adamant that he wanted to go.

So that was that, Luke and I hugged each other tightly one last time and said I love you and promised each other that we would keep in touch and that we would definitely be seeing each other again before next year’s Electric Forest. After that, i went back to my campsite to try to deal with the situation that was waiting for me there, all the while thinking about this crazy whirlwind festival love that I had found.

Which brings me to the whole point of this series of posts. I said that I found true love at Electric Forest this year and that it was my biggest takeaway from the festival, but I also promised you that this story wasn’t going to go the way you thought. You see, yes, Luke and I shared a very real love with each other, and made such an intense connection that we will hopefully always share with each other. The coolest part is that neither of us ever thought or cared about whether or not any of it was a gay thing, we were just enjoying the pureness of our connection to each other and enjoying every second in each other’s company. But that wasn’t the true love that I was referring to when I started this story.

Before Electric Forest this year, I was really struggling. I was basically dying slowly as each day passed. I had lost all sense of self worth, I had isolated myself from everyone I loved and called my friend, and I certainly didn’t love myself or think that I was worthy of being loved. I really felt like I was just a worthless piece of shit that no one really wanted to be around, that one friend that everyone kinda just tolerated out of kindness.

But meeting Luke, and spending the majority of Electric Forest with him this year, it woke me up from that abysmal nightmare and re-ignited a spark inside me. It reminded me of the truth that I had allowed myself in my misery to completely forget. Luke taught me that I most certainly AM worth something in this world, that I definitely am not only lovable, but I am loved. He showed me that I am a person worthy of love and worthy of being loved. He brought back my sense of self-confidence and my sense of self-worth. And because of that, I was able to once again fall in love with myself even with all of my current flaws and shortcomings.

Self-love is the purest form of true love there is out there. Because if you can’t love yourself, how can you ever possibly expect anyone else to truly love you, right? So I definitely found true love at Electric Forest this year, and it was my most important takeaway from the festival this year. I feel alive again. I feel the love again. And as an added bonus, I now have a really cool lifelong friend who I still talk to every day and we get to be a part of each other’s lives despite living so far apart from each other.

So thank you, Electric Forest (and Said the Sky), for bringing me back to life again this year, and thank you, Luke, for reminding me that I really should love myself because I’m actually a pretty swell guy worthy of being loved. The lesson of self-love was the best lesson I could have ever learned at Electric Forest this year, and though I still struggle at times to remember that now that I’m back home and back in the day to day drudgery of life, I’ll never forget this most important lesson that Luke taught me.

Well, that’s the end of it. I promised you this story wasn’t going where you thought it was going, and I hope I didn’t disappoint. I hope you have enjoyed following along this saga and reading each part as it came out. I know I really enjoyed writing it all out and reliving all of these unforgettable memories. If this is the first post that you’re reading, please check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to get the full story!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my Electric Forest stories! Please feel free to leave comments below, and I hope if you enjoyed my writing you will consider resteeming this post!