2010 was a very different time. 

For starters, I looked very different. I had a shocking amount of different hair colours that year, culminating with an all-bleached look that made my hair go bright orange. Because I had always wanted to be ginger, I let it be. (Everyone thought I wanted to be Hayley Williams) I used to sport straight jeans, polo shirts, t-shirts on top of jumpers, probably still purple tights, and a scarf at all times. My favourite brand was Glamour Kills. My favourite band was You Me At Six. I never wore any make-up. 

It was a very different time indeed.

On the 24th of March 2010, a whole entire ten years ago, a very special record was released. Hailing from Cardiff, Wales, five-piece Kids In Glass Houses gave their second full-length to the world. 

It was called Dirt, spelled in big, flowery letters, and it changed the course of my life.

Dirt was my gateway into Kids In Glass Houses, even though I knew of them through friends who had seen them support Simple Plan, a couple of years prior. I started listening to them myself a few months after Dirt came out because they were scheduled to support You Me At Six on their upcoming European tour. I remember going on holiday, in the summer of 2010, we were going on a family trip to London, and I had downloaded Dirt to listen on the way, and back, and probably every free second I had in between. I came back home with a physical copy of it freshly purchased from HMV, because it is what you did in those days. 

Ten years down the line, Dirt remains one of my all-time favourite records, forever a game-changer. A versatile mixture of clever pop-rock and almost-pop tunes, it's catchy and well-written, unique and emotional, relatable and personal all at once. Matters At All makes you dance like there's no tomorrow and The Morning Afterlife breaks your heart for a solid five minutes straight, no breaks, nothing, just pure heartbreak. Opened and closed by the exceptional Artbreaker, parts I and II, Dirt is one of the best damn records to have come out of the United Kingdom in the past decade.

Dirt changed the course of my life because it marked the start of a four-year long adventure. Kids In Glass Houses were the first band I properly followed around various countries and cities, sending me all over the country, from Brighton to Glasgow, from Ebbw Vale to Darlington. They were the first band I ever dedicated myself to, the first band I loved enough to want to drop everything and be there for every show. To this day, they still are the band I have seen live the most, top of the list at forty-two times, and their 2014 farewell tour is still the tour I have attended most dates of, with a solid eleven out of twenty-two, if my memory serves me well. Those four years were a whirlwind of emotions, and Kids In Glass Houses quickly became an escape from the rest of my life that was unraveling. 

Some of the tracks in Dirt come with a little story of their own. They take me back to various moments and places in my life. I waited four years to hear The Morning Afterlife live, and the day I finally did, a cold October day in Plymouth, I passed out within the first thirty seconds and had to be carried out of the venue. Lilli Rose somehow reminds me of dancing with my friends at the farewell show in Oxford, the one I wasn't supposed to attend and decided to go to because my friends were going, a last-minute decision that turned out to be a lot of fun. 

Sunshine is the first track to have stuck with me, and a fan-favourite. Anyone who knows me from that time has seen me sob my little heart out when it was being performed live. "Stop wishing for the sunshine, start living in the rain, stop telling me you'll be fine, start living with the pain" never failed to tug at my fragile heartstrings while "long live me 'cause I'll be fine without you" destroyed whatever was left of me by that point. 2010 was one of the most traumatic years of my life, and Sunshine became a lifeline for me, the little voice in the back of my head that wanted to believe I could get over every hardship and I would be okay.

Dirt was the accidental soundtrack of some of the worst times of my life, of formative years lost to the weirdest type of grief, mental health issues and non-existent self-confidence. While being fully aware of this, I want to take this platform, tonight, to celebrate the positive impact it had on those years. Those years would not have been anywhere near bearable if it hadn't been for the stupid adventures I lived following this band, the ridiculously long drives to Wales, to Germany, to Southampton, the time I got so overheated in the south of France I had to lie face down on the tiles of our hotel bathroom with a fan directed at my face, the drunken nights out in Cardiff. I made so many friends, for a day, a few months, or for life, through this band, and thanks to that, I learnt to come out of my little shell. 

After the farewell show, I have reflected on the four years I spent following Kids In Glass Houses and wished they had been here for the great years of my life, I wished I'd had their shows in the times where I felt on top of the world, where I looked like a human being and not the poster child for neon pop-punk, where I could hold a decent conversation instead of putting myself in everyone's shadow.

The thing is, I would have never got to this point if it hadn't been for the terrible days, terrible haircuts, terrible fashion decisions, terrible heartbreak and terrible self-esteem they soundtracked.

It's been ten years of Dirt, and I've grown to be filled with joy when I listen to this album. Sunshine will always be a little hard on my heart, but it will mostly remain one of my favourite songs in the world, and a part of the choir of my brain telling me I will be okay. 

Dirt has been my gateway into a band I have supported with every fiber of my being and every atom of my heart for four years, a four-year long fever dream that ended with confetti in a student union in Cardiff, crying because I didn't want to say goodbye and then, crying with laughter over a bag of crisps. It was four years of stupid adventures, tears, heartbreak, forty-two shows and forty-two years of apologies because absolutely no one should have to see me forty-two times in their lifetime span. It was four years of some of the best and worst places in the United Kingdom, of Travelodges, Megabuses, and sticky clubs, but a lifetime's worth of memories and friends. 

It mattered at all.

Goodnight.