My parents don’t listen to music. I’ve never asked them about it. I didn’t really even question it. It’s not something I ever thought about. Frankly, I’m not even sure if I really noticed it growing up. When we were young, car rides had classical, news radio, or nothing at all. When we got to high school, the pop station would be playing softly in the background, but this was more for my sisters. My parents didn’t sing along, didn’t dance, didn’t rock out, or say, “this is my jam.” The radio was on, so that we weren’t sitting in silence. We usually didn’t talk in the car. Our stereos weren’t blasting on the weekends. We didn’t have loud house parties. When we had people over, there was the sound of talking, and eating, and laughter. We lived a quiet, suburban life and I guess for the most part we preferred it that way. Looking back on it, it was a little bit odd. Not the quietness, but the lack of music.

Everyone listens to music. Music brings you through the good times and the bad, the easy and the hard. Music unites people, brings them together from all walks of life. It’s the great equalizer. Race doesn’t matter, neither does sexual orientation, nor gender. Music gives people things to talk about, things to meditate on, something to listen to, something to dance to. At a concert or a music festival, you don’t look into the crowd and see carbon copies of all the same people, clone of a clone of a clone. There’s diversity, it’s not homogenous. Music speaks to people in different ways. The message is specialized for each individual. Music, like most art is subjective. You’re allowed to make your own opinions, you’re allowed to come to your own conclusions. The artist, the originator, may choose to clarify the meaning behind the music, the meaning behind the lyrics, but it’s not necessarily required. The song may have been written in dark times, but reminds the listener of good times. The song may have been written in a happy moment, but evoke only feelings of sadness. The music may be good for your soul in one stage of your life, but not another. The meaning may change between stages. Music is versatile, and variable. I know I speak for many others, when I say that music is the soundtrack to my life.

It started when I was in 4^th or 5^th grade. Now, my parents had a rack of CDs, mostly classical music, and albums of old hymns and praise songs, but we never listened to them. They just sat next to the TV collecting dust. One day, my mom came home with two CDs that she said she had bought for us to listen to. They were called WOW Hits 2001 and WOW Hits 2002. They were collections of the most popular Christian pop and rock songs for each year. My younger sister, and I listened to these CDs almost non-stop. First on the boombox in the family room, then on our Discmans that we would receive as gifts later that year. This was the start of something new for us. My mom had bought these CDs from a place called Christian Book Distributors (CBD), a wholesale warehouse that sold Christian books, music, apparel, and gifts. They opened their doors two or three times a year, and allowed the general public to go and purchase whatever it was that they needed or wanted. So every time the doors opened, we would buy a handful of CD’s. That continued on for several years.

At that time, I started listening to the radio as well, to get a better mix of genres. I had a friend who had a Discman with a radio tuner that he listened to during recess. He introduced me to MIX 98.5 and JAMN 94.5, the local pop and rap stations respectively. I had reached the first act of my rebellious phase. I don’t know if this was ever blatantly stated to me, but at some point I had picked up the notion that secular music was bad, and capable of rotting your mind. It was unhealthy to listen to too much of it, and hip hop was the most unhealthy of them all. So naturally, I gravitated towards it. When I was in 6^th grade, my dad was growing tired of coming home to me playing videogames all day, so he decided that I was going to have a productive summer. I went to a day camp for a week where I created a 64bit Flash or Java game (I honestly don’t know what the difference is). After completing this, I was shipped off to China for three weeks. One of his coworkers had developed a short-term study program to educate pre-teens and teens about Chinese culture. It was based solely on word of mouth communication. I knew several of the kids from the monthly potluck get-togethers that a group of my dad’s coworkers hosted. We stuck together because we were the only ones who were not in high school.

Our days consisted of doing tai chi, eating traditional Chinese meals, sightseeing, and taking various classes such as history, calligraphy, and learning about the arts. But there was plenty of free time. I spent a lot of it observing, interacting, and soaking up information passed down from the older youth. It was a welcome hiatus from my closed-off, sheltered bubble of an existence. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers, so this was my first extended sojourn with non-Christians. This was a novel experience for me, to say the least. I wouldn’t say I came back completely changed, but I was certainly open to influence. 

Earlier in the year, I had purchased Kanye West’s The College Dropout after hearing ads for it on the radio and seeing it in the advertisement booklets included with the newspaper. I wouldn’t fully understand the impact this album had on me until nearly a decade later. For the next several years I listened to JAMN 94.5 diligently and watched music videos on BET in the years that we had cable TV. My parents were cheap(er) back in the day; every two years or so, when the contract expired they would renegotiate our Internet/phone deal. Usually the package would include free cable for a limited time as part of the bundle. Once the trial expired, we’d keep the internet, and cut the cable. These days would also introduce me to my first forays into writing, social media, and blogging. We had the precursors to Facebook and the like, in Myspace, AIM, and Xanga. I didn’t know it then, but the writing would stick with me. I wasn’t very good at it, but my first attempts at creating original content were writing some bars for rap songs that I had created in my head; influenced by then current-day classics as Drop It Like It’s Hot, Candy Shop, and Jesus Walks. But things changed pretty quickly after that.

The following year, in 2005, when I was looking through the CBD catalog, the cover art for a particular album caught my eye. It was Demon Hunter’s The Triptych. I’m not sure what exactly it was. Maybe it was how badass I thought the demon skull on the cover looked. I don’t really know, but regardless I knew my mom wouldn’t let me buy this album, so I didn’t try. But it stuck in my mind. Fast forward to August 2006, I had just returned from a family vacation and had found out about Facebook and Limewire earlier in the summer. Demon Hunter, along with The Devil Wears Prada, As I Lay Dying, and Becoming the Archetype were the first bands I would look up on Youtube, as well as download. I fell in love. I had discovered the anthem of the angsty teenager and the misunderstood youth. I still listened to rap occasionally, but metalcore, post-hardcore, melodic death metal, and other “scene” music was my go-to. Little did I know, but I unwittingly let the emotions of the music reflect deeply on the emotions of my life. The anger in these lyrics and these guitar riffs did not alleviate the anger I felt in my own head, heart, and soul.

Hindsight is 20/20, and as you get older you start to see past experiences and events with increasingly more clarity. I don’t know where it started to go wrong, but before I knew it, the depression started. From 10^th grade on, it was something I would struggle with on and off. It would come and go, ebb and flow. Winters and summers would be the worst. You know how Biggie once said, “birthdays was the worst days?” That was the story of my life. The months of July and August were by far the worst months of the year for me. The moodiness typically lasted anywhere between three to eight weeks, leading up to and away from my birthday. The cause was a composite of things including anxiety, insecurity, doubt, and pessimism. I didn’t have very much self-confidence, self-awareness, love or respect for myself. For some reason things didn’t exactly click for me after I went through puberty. I guess I didn’t fully grasp the changes going through my body and my brain, and there was no one there to explain them to me. I was pulled from sex ed, and my dad was always lost in his own world. A mother is not a very great teacher for a growing boy (in certain aspects), and my youth pastor had some sort of superiority complex that greatly inhibited his ability to instruct me properly. And thus I had no suitable role model. I had lost my way on the journey of life, and I didn’t have a mentor to keep me on track. So music became my guide. Music gave me direction, gave me a focus. But unbeknownst to me, not only did heavy music help me through my pain and the darkness, but it also held me down at the same time. I didn’t see or understand the duality in this. This music was my life blood, my driving force, but also my crutch, and my encumbrance.

Heavy music kept me just strong enough to keep going. Naturally I’ve always been shy and introverted, but this type of music made me introspective as well, and I became more and more withdrawn. As evidenced by the number of childhood friends I kept in touch with after leaving for, and graduating from college (a grand total of 1!). But as luck would have it, I found a group of friends in college that accepted me for who I was: an enigma. Not only was I misunderstood and a mystery to others, but I was someone that barely knew himself. Things were all very new to me (which isn’t to say this is a vastly different story from that of any other college student), but a lot of cogs and gears were turning, and set in motion at the same time. I had to deal with my anxieties, my depression, my insecurities, all while trying to be more outgoing than usual. I was in a completely new environment, in a completely different state. I didn’t know anybody, so I had no choice but to put myself out there, or risk being lonely in a foreign place. Eventually I made a few friends who shared a similar taste in music, and I found myself attending concerts with them. Life was good. I was comfortable. I had things under control. But doubt started to creep in. There were issues that I needed to stop running from. Issues that I needed to address once and for all.

I was in a relationship that was unhealthy for the both of us. There was a lot of arguing, a lot of guilt tripping, hurt feelings, and harsh words. That was one thing I had to deal with. Another was feeling the need and the pressure to find an internship to help me prepare for life after college. A third was me starting to question my faith; my thought process became very nihilistic when asking questions of why or what for. It’s not always clear or evident, but questioning is good for your faith. ALWAYS. Some churches don’t like to say it, some churches don’t like to stress it, but this is an infallible truth. Questioning is always beneficial. It promotes growth. It helps you to tear down your previous mentality, put together the pieces, and come to your own conclusions. It pushes you to step out of your parent’s faith, and into your own. I didn’t know this growing up. I didn’t know this after I had grown up. It took me years to discover this. It’s not something I really fully comprehended until a year or two ago. But nevertheless, none of this was anything I knew about at this point in my life.

Drawing my own conclusions was easy. I formulated my opinions based on what I heard in class, based on what I saw with my own eyes, and based on logic. Things started to come together, things started to make sense. My questions were being answered. But certain answers brought about new questions, and I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t anticipate it. The questions were hard, so hard. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had anger issues in the past, which still flare up every now and then. But on top of that, there was always the nagging feelings of melancholy and fear. Those two guys were always brooding there in the corner, in the back of my mind. I hadn’t addressed the depression directly, I hadn’t found a way to control my anger. And the people I was with didn’t make it easy. My ex and my mom were always able to find the words to say that would irk and annoy me, and vice versa. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not trying to shift the blame here, as I’m equally culpable; the dynamics of those relationships were not good for any of the parties involved. Suffice it to say, the relationship went downhill after the first year. One thing led to another, and I found myself in counseling. But like I said previously, it was inconsistent, mostly due to the various days off and end of semester breaks. The relationship wasn’t salvageable at this point, and it fizzled out. “Friends, lovers, or nothing.”

I came back for my senior year, broken. I no longer had a girlfriend, and I wasn’t going to church. I continued seeing the therapist for a little bit longer, but I stopped after a month or so. I wasn’t seeing any noticeable changes, and in so doing, unwittingly pushed off my healing for another half decade. I numbed my emotions with cigarettes, alcohol, and weed. As if my emotions weren’t hard enough to deal with before the breakup, they were now infinitely worse. But continuing with the theme of my life up til that point, I once again ignored my emotions and kept them locked up in the “DO NOT TOUCH” box in my subconsciousness. At this point, coincidentally, I had stopped listening to heavy music. I never made an open declaration, but I guess I had the feeling that I had outgrown this type of music. I returned to my first love: hip hop.

I found strength in anthems such as Poetic Justice, Fuckin’ Problems, and New Slaves. I was rediscovering my roots. I was looking past the anger and the hatred and finding myself again. It was a good feeling, reclaiming an old passion of mine. And this brought about a noticeable shift in my everyday mood. I was not as depressed as I had been, can I daresay that I was content? I was going out more, hanging out with friends, making new acquaintances. Outwardly, things were looking up. I was accomplishing tasks that I had set out to do in the current day and in years past. But a dark cloud still loomed overhead. When I was alone, I was left with my dark brooding thoughts. The weed certainly didn’t help. You know how it is. When you’re high, your mind sometimes brings up strange and obscure thoughts that push you down a rabbit hole. My rabbit hole, of course, was dreary and morbid; full of negativity, fear and shame. I hadn’t properly addressed my conflicting emotions after all. When you defer addressing serious issues in your life, it just gives them room to fester and grow. Naively or not, I foolishly decided it was not in my best interest to tackle this once and for all. My depression and my anxiety, as you all know, would linger and be underlying issues that would remain with me for years, until I decided to tear them free. You can only change if you want to change. You can only get better if you want to get better. So outwardly things were different, but inwardly things remained the same.

The year after I graduated was a strange year (2015). I was living in an off-campus house with three other people. One of my good friends had moved out the semester before. So the makeup of the house that summer was a friend that I had grown distant from, a female acquaintance of ours, and a stranger that we found through Facebook. My friend had a new girlfriend who he was spending most of his time with on campus. The female acquaintance was in a sorority so she was always out. The stranger invited me out every so often, but I never felt all that close to him. It was a strange dynamic to say the least; I had never felt more alone in my life. As luck would have it, the friend who moved out invited me to attend a music festival with him and several others in Philly. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. I was there for the hip hop: Meek Mill, J. Cole, Big Sean, Future. But like the majority of festivals these days there was EDM present there as well. At that point in time, I liked to tell myself (and others) that I was allergic to EDM, but eventually it started to grow on me. In an unforeseen turn of events it even became my go-to for a while. I was going to music festivals and raves year after year. And I found that listening to upbeat, positive music made me feel something for the first time in many years. Of course, maybe it was just the drugs talking, but I felt alive!

Life was rough after the breakup. I mean, it’s a tough situation for anybody. But not properly dealing with your emotions makes it immensely more difficult. You live and you learn, but sometimes you’re too jaded to see through your ignorance and your bullish stubbornness. It’s like you become so set in your ways that you fall into bad habits. You ignore all other options, and just go with what you know. What I knew was running away, and numbing my pain. I didn’t have a constructive outlet to release pent up negativity and bad energy. I was writing song lyrics and poems on and off for a few years, but I didn’t stick with it. It wouldn’t have helped anyway; I hadn’t realize that I could channel my emotions through my creativity. In my teenage brain they were two distinct and separate concepts. There was no overlapping, there was no combining them together. So what I needed growing up was someone to talk to. A wall to bounce ideas off of. A place to release my emotions, and thoughts, and feelings without any judgment. The judgment was key. Whether it was just my perception or reality is irrelevant. Growing up I was consumed with shame and guilt stemming from my fear of judgment. This, I can point to as a key piece of my development. At some point, it became difficult for me to relate to others, to open up. I stayed within my shell, because it was safer that way.

But this approach led inevitably to having a lot of pent-up frustration, anger, and sadness. Like I said, un-dealt with, ignored, sitting in a box. Sometimes the emotion would slip out in the form of an abrupt and intense rage. Or a deep and random melancholia. Or the giddiness of feeling on top of the world. The highs were high, and the lows were low. I was far from even-keeled. There was no way to know how I would feel from one moment to the next. It was embarrassing sometimes, which furthered my argument for keeping everything bottled up inside. But when the break-up happened, the bottle exploded. The box tore at the seams. The emotions started swirling in my brain. The pain of 20 years. Going to California didn’t help it any. And I made two conscious decisions: stop going to church, and stop feeling. Novocain my heart, novocain my mind, novocain my soul. Maybe most shocking to me was that it worked! For a time…

If I haven’t made the moral of the story clear enough, let me ram it home one more time. Say it in plain English. DON’T IGNORE YOUR EMOTIONS, folks. Don’t do it. Just don’t. It’ll lead to more pain in the future. It’ll lead to years or decades of stunted growth. It’ll lead to a cycle of gloom and despair. I would know, I lived it. For a time, I had no purpose in life. Life was meaningless. Same shit, different day. I was muddling through life as only a wallower could. Highlights of my life included going out with friends, and getting tattoos. The rest of my existence was work, smoke, Netflix, eat, sleep, rinse & repeat. For a time, I was getting tattoos solely because the physical pain reminded me that I was alive. Not a great way to live. But listening to EDM, gave me some semblance of hope. Made me feel something aside from my constant state of apathy. It sparked me, and motivated me in spurts. The afterglow of a festival kicked me in gear for two or three weeks at a time. But it wasn’t enough to get me started, the engine would sputter and die. I wasn’t motivated enough to change my lifestyle. But these little sparks at least got me thinking. Eventually, after several cycles of starting & stopping, I got the sense that I could do better. I realized that I wanted more. I was no longer satisfied with the same old. The routine was getting monotonous. I started thinking deeply about my direction in life, and I rediscovered my love of writing. I now had a purpose.

We all know how the story ends. I met a girl, I started seeing a therapist, I addressed my emotions. The river started flowing abundantly. Little did I know, but God had a plan for me this whole time. Everything happens for a reason. Adversity makes you stronger. Cliche, I know. There are different stages and different seasons in your life. A time for preparation, a time for healing, a time for refocus, a time for breakthrough. In late January/early February this year, one of the last times I attended church in person, my pastor preached about something that I internalized deep in my core. He said that 2019 was our sowing season, our time of healing. 2020 would be our year. He said to prepare our minds to be blown every month this year. I took this message to heart. It’s kept me optimistic through these troubling times. I’m still claiming 2020 as my year, my period of breakthrough. I still have hope for this year. I’m still seeing blessings, even with an economic shutdown. Even without work. I have faith.

But none of this would’ve been possible without the effort and time it took me to get my mind right. It was years in the making. From the years of pain and depression, to the breakup, to my turning away from the church, to my darkest day. All this bleakness ushered in a season of change, a season of regrowth, a season of healing, a season of preparation. All of this hardship was necessary. For without it I never would’ve made it to therapy. I never would’ve reached the point in my life where I became perfectly in sync with my emotions. Now that I’ve removed my emotions from the box and started dealing with them squarely, I haven’t needed to invest so deeply in the music that I listen to. Music no longer changes my emotions, messes with my moods. Music is just music. My emotions are no longer centered around outside influences. I’m in tune with them now. And thus, the sole purpose of music for me now is entertainment value only. I’ve been listening to a mix of metal, hip-hop and EDM. The soundtracks to the three stages of my life have merged, and become one.