Anxiety in Rhythm: Using Music to Cope

My junior year of high school, to sum it together with the bare minimum, was absolutely miserable.

My closest confidants, most of which were in the grade above mine, had offered plenty of warnings on the trials and tribulations that I was standing at the unforgiving door of - but hell - I figured, hey, it can’t be that bad, right?

   By this point in the year, just a few measly steps past the halfway mark, this had become my routine. I’d come home from school, the undersides of my eyes depicting a deep, grave hue of something between black and grey - which was not at all flattering to the remainder of my ghastly pale skin - disregard my things into some neglected corner of my room, and climb into bed.

   At times my mother would come barking at the opposite side of my door, hurling some form of an empty insult on how ‘lazy’ or unstrung I had become; eventually, I discovered the hidden craft of almost completely tuning out her presence. I simply couldn’t muster the effort to care about her opinions anymore; I could barely care for my own.

  And in the evenings, I’d wait.

  I knew it was coming; it was practically inevitable. I would sit as complacent as a stone in the middle of my mattress, staring blankly at the computer screen in front of me (simply opening my browser was typically as far as I’d get in the process of ‘trying’ to complete my homework). I would feel that feeling rise within me as my chest seemed to sink far below my stomach.

“You can’t do this. You’re too weak to do this again.” My inner dialogue would ring harshly into my ears, the tone sounding as panicked as my actual voice did.

 And then, in the midst of experiencing a whirlwind of everything and nothing at all, something inside of me would break into half - every. single. time. I’d send myself into a fit of tears - my breathing suddenly ragged and distraught. I convinced myself that I must’ve been going mad; I thought, “Jesus, only absolute basketcases must act out like this, right?!”

  Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.

 I couldn’t fathom that my trauma had become my worst enemy - and for the most painfully prolonged period of time, I had not the slightest clue in regards of how to cope. I didn’t cope, until this particular evening.

 After what I could only imagine was well over thirty minutes of weeping myself sick and cursing the world for my downfalls, the hazed, yet somewhat bright idea came to mind that perhaps some music would aid in my calming process. I hastily grabbed my headphones, and through tear-stunted vision, plugged them into the bottom of my phone.

  I can’t recall which song I chose; at that point, I don’t think it mattered - anything would do. However, I do vividly recall how quickly my feverishly scattered mind seemed to settle around the steady beat and the smoothly hidden bassline. It gave me something to grasp to - a lifeline. I didn’t have the room to process anything other than the way the progression in the chords gave me some sense of serendipity.

  I could breathe; I could exhale. Notwithstanding the fact that those moments came few and far too between, in that particular instance, it’s all that mattered.

 For months on end, this became my therapy. My way to survive every rough moment I encountered - which at one point appeared like an endless, unrelenting streak.

Music isn’t just a concept of the media that we mindlessly consume; it’s a form of art - of life. The universal language of love, some might say.

It’s my language of life.