Do you have certain songs that you correlate so strongly with certain events, or even certain years of your life? Songs that you feel a deep personal connection to that specifically feel as if they were written for you? I feel so alone in experiencing this, and I believe that this can bring both joy and pain.
I have songs that if I even hear a note of, throw me back into the worst times of my life. If the notes keep playing, one after another, I feel completely paralyzed and entrapped, as if I am right back in the worst moments of my life, knowing that anything could be done to my body by the hands of someone who is my worst, most unforgivingly vicious nightmare that has taken human form, ignoring my pleas no matter how many times I cry no.
I have songs that remind me of the heat of summer turning into the cool of fall. The song that reminds me of a broken, lost, girl feeling the tiniest amount of trust in another person, that desired to see if that trust would grow, after swearing to herself that she would never trust another human being again. The same song that I would listen to behind closed doors and the running water of a bathtub, while I smiled and thought of the future, even if at the time it seemed like nothing more than an unachievable dream.
The same song that I play now, as I
thank God for allowing that trust and love to grow more than I could have ever imagined, and as I can't stop smiling when I think about how much it could continue to grow in the future.
I have songs that remind me of a twelve year old child that never slept and stayed awake for days, of a fifteen year old that swapped out days of not sleeping for days of not eating, praying that the body she resented so strongly could just disappear completely, because no matter how many hours I spent scrubbing my skin in the bath, I could never get the feeling of your disgusting hands off of my fragile skin, so I tried to turn to bones instead.
Songs that remind me of every terrorizing thought that invaded my frail mind for every year in between. Songs that make a nineteen year old smile because I see a future where I will heal from this.
Sometimes I want to compile each of these songs into a list, and tell the story of my life.
