I'm Not Losing You
A Story of Dedication to Those I Love
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“See, everyone out there is having a good time. Everyone’s getting along now. You got your wish I guess.” He said to me. Sure enough, I looked up into the den and I saw everyone laughing and smiling again. I guess my wish had sort of come true.
“Jackie, get back here! Mya you too!” Yelled Rachel. Jackie started to walk away, and pulled me out of my chair to get me to go with him. I laughed at his effort, and just went along.
“Mya, guess what Rachel just remembered she had in her bag?” asked Mardy.
“What?”
“This is the diary of a….” answered Sam.
“Yeah, we finally got it all edited. ‘Vi3 Fan Diary Part 1’ is complete!” Rachel finished.
“Oh boy. Put it in!” I said. It was the first time I had seemed excited about something since I came back. And I was DEFINITELY excited to see this video. It was over a year of random fan footage. Us getting ready for shows, the ride to a show, random strange times that we’ve had, promo voyages, and the ride home from shows. It was that sort of video. The opening scene was Nicole. We had gotten her to do a little intro. It was her sneaking around in the dark around a car that looked like the Denali. She had on a jacket that said “Vi3 SPAM Team,” an inside joke between some of us. The background music was “Beat It” and she was sneaking around this car, dancing to the beat of the song. It was pretty funny. By the time her scene was over, almost the whole room full of people was laughing. The scene finished with her doing some dance move and hitting the car, setting off the alarm. She ran off, and the title came across the screen. Then we had Rachel and Michelle’s intro from the LVL3 show back in the day. The whole video was just awesome. I had no idea about some of the footage that was in there. Like the footage of me at work dancing around the store with Liz to “Turn It Up” when we found out that it was on the Charlotte Russe CD. Wow. I felt like a big dork. My favorite part was where we took each of us, Sam, Rachel, Mardy and myself, and we had the “A Day in the life of ____” sections. For mine, Rachel had followed me around Elmhurst with a video camera all day. She had basically documented me sleeping and doodling through all my classes. Then came the class with Tim Hays. Justin saw his face on the screen and just shouted out,
“Hey! It’s Tim! You better not be sleeping in this class!” Sure enough, the camera went to my face, and there I was, sitting up, trying NOT to sleep. I told Justin that the only reason I was sleeping everywhere else was because this was the day after one of Vi3’s famous club shows in Milwaukee. The last thing you heard in my “day in the life” section was Tim ask me, “Hey Melissa, how’s Justin?” and me have this dumbfounded look on my face. Then it went to the rest of the girls sections. After about 20 minutes of video, I saw Rachel and Sam’s faces, and they were whispering. I could see that they were in the hallway of a hotel. All of a sudden in the middle of my den, I screamed out “OH NO! YOU DID NOT LEAVE THIS IN HERE!” and threw a pillow at Rachel and Sam when I realized what they had left on the video.
“What’s up, it’s Rachel and Sam again, and we’re going to document how long it takes Mya to get ready for a show. We’re live at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Chicago, and it is….11:00 am on February 8, 2003. Mya is just about to wake up and start getting ready. So let’s go!” They snuck back into our hotel room and filmed me asleep. I heard a collective “awe” from everyone sitting around me in the den. I ducked down and covered my face. The whole room laughed. When I looked back up at the TV, I saw the camera stay still on me, and Sam yell, “Mya!!!! GET UP!!!” I turned my head, and realized there was a camera in my face. So what did I do? I took a pillow, threw it at Sam, threw my other one at Rachel and covered my face with my blanket. The scene changed to “Tweedle Dumb & Tweedle Dumber” talking again.
“It’s now 12:47, and Mya has finally gotten out of bed. Currently she is putting clothing on, so we are shunned to the hallway for obvious reasons.” Sam knocked on the hotel door. “Mya, are you ready yet?” I answered back yes. They opened the door, and filmed me doing my sit ups and sweating on the hotel floor.
“What the fuck are you doing? Get that camera out of here!” I yelled at the two of them, trying not to laugh and keep doing my sit ups. Meanwhile, while I was watching all of this in my den, I was turning bright red and burying myself in my couch. This video had turned into the “make fun of Mya” expedition all of a sudden. The rest of this so-called scene documented everything from the re-bleaching of some of my hair, my long shower (well, it filmed the bathroom door for that one…), our trip to lunch, where I refused to eat a full meal (hey, if you saw my skirt for the show, you would know why!), and finally, the two hours it took me to get dressed, put on makeup and style my hair for the show. At the end of the whole thing, they had some footage of me actually hanging out with everyone at the awards, and Rachel yells, “Finally, a finished product!” My whole den started applauding. How embarrassing. All I could say was,
“Oh my god all of you just saw me without any makeup on.” And at that, I got a few pillows launched at me by everyone I had thrown one at before.
The rest of the video was just as funny as the beginning. Everything from Rachel mouthing along and dancing to “Eyes Closed So Tight,” to Sam dancing the old choreography to “Go-Get-Her” in a random Burger King parking lot, to me singing more Britney Spears karaoke to win tickets to some show. Somehow I ALWAYS end up doing that, and winning. I never did quite understand. But hey, it got me free tickets! But eventually, the video came to an end. After over an hour of Vi3 fan diary footage, there was finally an end. And what was rolling? Yep. The credits! For the credits, we used some extra special footage. It was our tape from Milwaukee where Erik had to lead us to the highway because we were so lost. Erik sees this start, and he just goes,
“Hey! That’s my car!” and everyone started laughing. While the credits were rolling, featuring the name of every fan that appeared in the video (such as “Girls making strange noises in bathroom- Kristina, Crystal and Krissy”) plus the names of the guys and such, our audience was treated to my “vocal stylings” once more as they heard me singing the theme song to “Batman” and heard me, Rachel and Michelle start cracking jokes. Once the whole video ended, I think it had some people nearly in tears from laughing so hard. While everyone was laughing, I heard Jackie yell,
“Oh my god I want a copy of that! That was hysterical!” I saw him wiping his eyes from laughing so hard. We agreed to make each of the guys a copy to take home and laugh at. And of course, some of the girls were asking for a copy. We just said that if they get us a tape and $5, we’ll make one.
Eventually, it came time to wrap up our little holiday party. Everyone started getting up to leave, and say their good-byes to everyone else in the room. As everyone was saying good-bye to everyone else, I took the time to thank the guys once again for showing up.
“For real you guys, thank you SO much for stopping by. You really didn’t have to, and it’s so nice that you did.” I said to all four of them.
“Well thanks so much for inviting us. We had a lot of fun, even if there was one awkward bit of time.” Erik said, referring to the drama of the day.
“Well I’ll be sure next time something like this happens, there won’t be any fighting.” I laughed. “Merry Christmas guys, and I’ll see you all on January 4!”
“Definitely! Definitely!” Justin replied as I gave him his hug. The rest of them said just about the same thing as I hugged each of them. They made their way through my living room, and through the people that were here, hugging each one until they got to the door. They were the first people to leave, and as soon as they did, everyone else started to head out. The last to leave was my crew. They stayed and helped me clean up everything and find everything that people had left behind.
“Well, not a perfect success, but not a failure in the least.” Said Mardy. I agreed. This was definitely going down in history as one of my favorite moments. I’ll just remember to leave the whole fight out of it.
