Music is the Only Thing That Makes Sense Anymore
Play it loud enough and it keeps the demons at bay.
Play it loud enough and it keeps the demons at bay.
During the fall of 2003, as the weather turned cold, I found myself processing ten months of pain and loss. The house I called home, my father, girlfriend, and support structure had vanished, and I was stuck on a college campus that was more home than school, but I at least had my music.
I was 19 years old and had just begun my second year at the University of North Texas when I received a phone call from my mom informing me the time had finally come. Despite years of yelling, crying, and slamming doors in my childhood, she finally called her marriage quits. The timing could have been better, however, considering my first girlfriend had dumped me on Sunday, and the phone call came four days later. I still don’t like Thursdays, and when asked why, I usually recall that third week in January.
My relationship with Desiree was problematic from the start. It was the first time I ever competed for the attention of a girl with another guy, and at the start of the race, I was losing. Desi (as she went by) was 5'5" with short, dirty blond hair and green eyes. She was loud and proud at all times, and she never took no for an answer or regretted any action. Desi lived her life on the edge, and for someone who was dealing with deep insecurities due to a physical disability, I couldn’t handle her carefree lifestyle. Eventually, those differences turned into arguments, and a few weeks later, it was over.
So, four days after the relationship came to a screeching halt, I found myself with no father to call for advice. Dad decided to stop being a father as if his marriage was an addiction and myself, brothers, and mom were the cigarettes giving him cancer. Did we want to stay in our house? Dad decided he couldn’t give us any money, so the home was eventually foreclosed on. My oldest brother dropped out of college at Baylor to work two jobs and support us. My second brother also returned home to provide support. Did we want to make car payments? Too bad because we needed food and electricity to stay on. So, we shared a car, asked for rides, and took buses.
After receiving two life changing events days apart from each other, my mental health broke down for the first time. I spent several evenings crying in Sarah’s room. Sarah was on the dorm staff with me and was always willing to share her shoulder to cry on. I remember walking to her room in tears, in the middle of a panic attack, watching her open the door in pajamas. Looking back, I’m not sure what I would have done if I had been in her shoes, but she was the best friend a sad, lonely, kid could have asked for. We stayed up listening to music and talking about everything from my mom and dad to my now ex-girlfriend.
After an endless summer of confrontations, phone calls for money, and filling out government assistance forms, I returned to college, but my brothers stayed home to work while my mom moved to a new, much smaller, and cheaper house. Having lived in the dorm longer than my mom had lived at her new house, Bruce Hall became my home. To this day, I have dreams I am living in the same dorm room. The dreams are sad and lonely, just how I felt 20 years ago.
In order to shut out the pain of reality, I walked around campus at night with my iPod playing the angriest, most painful music I could find. Metallica was usually on repeat, as was The Offspring. But no song made me feel better than Eminem’s Sing for the Moment. In a medium-tempo rap track, Eminem talks about his own personal struggles with being famous and the criticism his lyrics had gained him. However, it all drives home an emotional connection to kids who are from broken homes and feel like no one wants them, which was exactly who I felt I was back then.
It’s so scary in a house that allows no swearing
To see him walkin’ around with his headphones blarin’
Alone in his own zone, cold and he don’t care, he’s
A problem child, and what bothers him all comes out
When he talks about his fuckin’ dad walkin’ out
It’s one of those songs which seems to have been written just to describe my own struggles. I couldn’t talk to anyone about my father because they wouldn’t understand. I had friends whose parents had divorced when they were kids but not when they were 20. And when their parents did divorce, their father didn’t abandon them. With the anger building inside I could have smashed everything in my room, but this one song kept me from going crazy. The key phrase in the verse below is, “…wishing they’d die ’Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe.” I could have listened to the final verse on repeat, and I’d still cry every time because it taught me others feel the deep emotional pain I felt.
Or for anyone who’s ever been through shit in their lives
So they sit and they cry at night, wishin’ they’d die
’Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We’re nothin’ to you, but we’re the fuckin’ shit in their eyes
If a millionaire rapper felt the same way I did, and he turned his pain into something amazing, then I could too! I wasn’t naive enough to believe my world would “go back to normal,” but I knew I would find a new normal. An emotional place where watching families move their children out of a dorm room didn’t make me want to punch something. It would be normal that I wouldn’t feel anxious when my mind started to remember my past while I was trying to sleep.
Today, this song means everything to me because of those lonely nights. It doesn’t matter what happens to Eminem in his career or personal life because nothing can change what this song did for me during that period of my life. No one can take that from me, not even Eminem. Today, I can listen to the song, and I immediately recall walking past a field of clovers, stopping, and just wanting to scream out loud. I know exactly which tree I was under for 30 minutes with Sing for the Moment playing loudly on repeat until the pain went away, and my struggles seemed to subside.
Now that I’m 40 years old, have three kids of my own, and a family I would do anything to keep, the way my dad left makes me more dumbfounded than angry. I haven’t talked to him in over 20 years, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m not angry, sad, or alone; I just don’t care where he is or what he is doing. He must be close to 70 years old and has spent the last two decades living his life without me and my family, so why change it now?
I didn’t need him then, and I don’t need him now. I just need an incredible song that makes my demons go away.
Sing for the Moment is my song, and I hope you find yours too.
