I grew up with a love for music, and as I grew older my music taste expanded beyond what I grew up with, always believed in as I always found it to be so true, “When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. When you’re sad you understand the lyrics” I can listen to something and it conjure up so many memories, good and bad all entwined together as in time those songs often changed their meaning for me.

I have gone through so many changes this year, especially since the night of my incident I have never been the same again. The night when I fell so much into my darkness once again, but this time the darkness felt different this time. Felt like a darkness I was not coming out of, even with the help of cutting, cutting has always helped me, helping me to switch from my emotional pain, and felt the physical pain as the pain and darkness bleed out. Cutting was something I have been doing since I was 16, after a time after my grandmother passed away, the only one that help me feel like I belonged and made my darkness go away. With her gone, I found a new way to deal with the pain within. At times music will help, as I listen to the music take over and found an escape, but times music wouldn’t help and that day was one of them, so I resorted to cutting, but this time neither help me through this darkness I was feeling that day that I did something I thought I would never do, a line I never crossed because when all else failed, cutting always kept me from crossing that line and lead me out of the darkness. I crossed that line that day wanting nothing more than grasp my final breathe, and took pills and overdosed. As my attempt failed, to others, it may not have been a failure attempt but a blessing, yet to me it was another failure on my part.

After that night I was never the same, the things I enjoyed and loved dearly no longer meant anything to me anymore. Even my love for writing and most of all my love for music, as I would not listen or create anymore of my mixes. Feeling lost and alone, not knowing what was coming next for me as I no longer knew who I was or what I was becoming if I was becoming anything at all. Lost trying to figure to how to get back what I loved, and find some shred of joy in anything. I finally let go of my pride and asked for help from someone who has dealt with severe depression and anxiety, and like me has lost her way. I asked how she started to begin to put the pieces back together, how do I find what I loved and enjoy doing once before and bring them back into my life. Her advice was to force myself no matter what I wanted, to keep my creative channels open and in time, piece by the piece things will begin to fall into place. At time the pieces will not fit like before, as a new version of myself will emerge as the core of who I was will find a place within myself, entwined the new and old. 

So I began to create music again, and in time I began to enjoy it, but at times it felt like a chore. I know in time I will find myself again, with who I was at the core. Knowing that I had to find my love for music again, and my love for writing as it was now the only tool I had to fight my way out of the darkness as cutting was no longer an option for me. No longer option not because I don’t want or needed, as I feel the strong need at times to fall back into it, but don’t for the reason of the fear I have, the fear that will cross that line again, as I once had before know in my heart I am capable of doing it once again. It had become a more of a struggle as times now knowing I am capable of it, I often at times find myself wanting nothing more that to correct my failure of that day. So I continue to create my mixes, and every week that I create a new one, the songs I once loved began to take on new meanings. My mixes have always been an extension of myself and my thoughts and feelings, and lately nothing couldn’t be further from the truth as I have been able to begin to exercise my demons and finding a home again within my music. As even with a finished mix, one day listening to it could mean one thing, then the next time it takes on a whole new meaning for me, feeling something new each time conjuring a different memory than it conjured up the time before with each listen constantly changing, in turn processing every aspect of my emotions from happy to sad, and at times a mixture of the two. Finding myself back to music, I was able to slowly feel a piece of me once again, a piece of the puzzle of who I was that was lost had slowly returned.

Music is a part of me, and I put myself into my mixes, so when you listen to them or when I share not only a song but a playlist, I am sharing a part of me and who I am. My music is a love I had lost and in time had returned to me. I know I am a long way from my journey to self discovery of who I am, who I will become, I can take some comfort that I found a piece of who I was, a piece of myself I loved and held dear to my heart. As I am now living a world apart from who I was and now constantly growing and learning who I am becoming, always discovering new meaning within the songs, as it helps me through my journey of my self discovery of who I was and who I am becoming.