How I Survived Those Years
The silence made me realize what I have been avoiding.
Silence.
Sitting on the same cold couch that my body had been laying on for the past week, I feel the life inside of me dying away in the silence.
Although everything seems to be better off than it was five years ago, I’m beginning to notice how one moment of sadness can linger and become days of internal agony. I don’t mean to sound dramatic — perhaps I am a little — but when you are caught up in your own irrational headspace, it is easy to perceive it as such.
How did I survive this everyday for two years? I ask — in my head. The room remains silent.
It’s been a while since I listened to the music I enjoyed. Ever since my situation got better three years ago, I have been subconsciously avoiding the emo classics I once immersed myself in. I don’t want to remind myself of all that happened in those two years.
Maybe I was desensitized to the pain — numbness was my norm. Or maybe the sadness was overwhelming, to the point where I still felt it but I became accustomed to it.
When a state has been stable and peaceful for a long period of time, unless they constantly prepare for it, they are often caught off guard when a battle comes. My mind has been at peace for some time, with the occasional meltdown — and when those battles inside my head come, I have been caught off guard.
This silence is overbearing.
I sift through old playlists of songs until I stumble upon those of My Chemical Romance. These were the songs I listened to all day and all night, every day and every night. These were the songs I performed onstage with my cover band — the shyness and gloom dissipated as my confidence grew with my voice. The thought of death could not stop me from living in the music.
One lyric I will never forget is that in “The Kids From Yesterday”:
When we were young, we used to say that you only hear the music when your heart begins to break.
I really did feel that.
Music is here, and the silence left.
The songs begin playing in the order of the playlist — the one I had not set my ears on in over three years.
The silence is now gone, and my heavy sorrows went with it too. Hopelessness is turning into fearlessness, desperation into motivation.
Finally, I stand up and belt along with the roaring guitars, haunting vocals, piercing drums, groovy basslines… The life I thought had died inside of me came alive again with intoxicating intricacy — an emotional experience that transcended the space of the dim lit room.
I relived all the times I almost gave up on life, all the times I was revived by music:
Music saved my life.
And now I continue to sing the songs that make me forget all troubles, remove all weight from my sorrows, and reaches to the person inside of me — the one who lives for the music.
A.X. Bates 2021
