The Power Of A Song

They say that change is the only constant in life. You get older, you change, your preferences change, people come and people go. It would be so nice if every change was a clean *swish* wipe of a slate and a new beginning would be really a “new beginning”. But, as everyone knows, that is not the case. Some aspects of life change, while some remain painfully the same.

Music! The universal, eternal language! The ultimate comfort. A constant companion for most people, myself included. Like everything else in life, no one goes through life’s journey with the exact same taste in music. People devote years to a single genre and suddenly one day, the attraction for that kind of music is just gone. Much later in the future, however, strains of a familiar song bring back memories of the past, both dreadful and wonderful.

Why must music be such a trigger? It is said that music can be healing. But the opposite is also true isn’t it? Music can also be devastating. A damaged person, walking on the path of recovery, can be pulled down the black hole again because of this trigger. Ask me. I know.

I once knew a guy. Let’s call him ‘X’. X told me to listen to Breaking Benjamin. I got hooked on to Without You, Diary of Jane and I Will Not Bow. X and I became friends. And then came turmoil. X dated Y, while secretly crushing on Z. He dumped Y to date Q while still crushing on Z. Z went on to date someone else. Things ended badly between X and Q. X wanted Z. Z did not want X. X promised to kill himself and then X became a cradle snatcher. The friend I once thought I knew disappeared beneath oodles of sleaze and a false exterior. I had seen him without his mask of innocence and I didn’t care for it. Breaking Benjamin was swept aside by Train and Daughtry.

Today I was listening to music and the miracle known as the “shuffle button” took me down memory lane as the all-too-familiar lines of Without You started playing.

Searched for the answers I knew all along

I lost myself

We all fall down

Never the wiser of what I’ve become

Alone I stand

A broken man

Without meaning to, my thoughts drifted to X, more popularly known nowadays as “The Jackass”. I haven’t heard from him in almost two years. I have nothing but pure simmering hatred for him coursing for him in my veins. I had tried to forget him and get on with my life. I thought I had succeeded until Breaking Benjamin proved me otherwise. Life seemed so unfair! Who was he? What had he thought of himself, that he could just waltz into my life, turn it upside down for me and my closest friends and then waltz out just as coolly? And despite all my attempts to bury the poison, all it took to drag the wound to the surface was just a song. Just. One. Song. The hatred, renewed. The hurt felt afresh. The betrayal stinging just as much as it did two years back. I never thought only a song would make me feel this way. It shows that I still have a long road ahead to recovery. When do I know that I have recovered? The day that I can finally utter the last words of the same song:

I forgive you, forget you, the end.

~Inquisitive I