Music My First Love
Where do I even start? How do I try to explain our palpable relationship, the way you immersed me in as a little girl?
You raised me in a quiet home where who I was becoming wasn’t supported or held. You comforted me in a lonely room, where my biggest secrets developed, and my confidence felt weakened.
Your positive melodies deepen my love for you.
Through different vibrations and tones, i now know, you were my container. The place that saw me when I didn’t have the language to see myself. You regulated and mirrored my emotions when they felt obfuscated. You taught me curiosity around comfort, confidence, intimacy, and spirituality. You reminded me that I am deserving and capable.
The creative words, the passion in the voices, and the perfect pairing to the rhythms gave me something to believe in. It wasn’t the sound I craved. It was the translation. Finding another piece to the puzzle of me.
I needed you every day. Recording VH1 or MTV on VHS. Staring at the fuzzy black and white channel, waiting for someone to dial in my favorite videos. Mailing a postcard to join Janet's fan club at eight. Practicing my soprano to Mariah’s Someday. Ejecting unfamiliar cassette from my parents' collection. Coming home from school to play my new boombox, recording songs off the radio, making mixtapes, or playing the many CDs I got from sending Columbia House a penny.
I cherish all our conversations. You always show up at the right time, carrying the hard things I’m facing in a way my intuition can’t deny.
Like in late 2003, when an album titled Hard arrived, naming everything I was feeling inside my marriage. Through those songs, you revealed to me my deepest desires. Wanting to know what it's like to truly be in love, and inspired me to want adoring mornings. Then again, months later, a softer Confession arrived, telling me it was time to let it burn. When you speak, I hear you loudly.
When it’s just us, nobody else exists. You’re an escape, my lifeline, bringing me back to myself.
You taught me how to recognize my own voice. Through voices that aren't my own, I learned that feeling deeply was not a flaw, that expression could move people, and that what couldn’t be explained didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It just meant I hadn’t found its language yet.
Music, your electric current lit something in me, validating the pull I felt in my body. Through our connection, I felt the grandness of my life reflected back to me. What would have sounded silly to most became a hidden gem only you could recognize. You held me safe until destiny showed itself. Because of you, I didn’t disappear during the wait. Before I could trust myself, you trusted me.
You embedded a vision board inside me before I knew how to externalize it. I never needed a physical one. Your compilations etched it into me.