I believe in music. Music has always been a part of my life. Whether it was my mother singing to me as a child, my oldest sister twirling me around to her favorite songs, or performing onstage in front of a crowd of a thousand people; it has always been there waiting to greet me like an old friend. Welcoming memories like a hug.

On New Year’s Eve in 2015, my best friend and I were laying around trying to kill some time before getting ready. My friend randomly got up and turned on some music. Not just any music though, it happened to be our guilty pleasure songs, boy bands. At first, we were just sitting there singing along with the music. Next thing I know, we are having a full on dance party. We are singing at the top of our lungs, laughing, and dancing around her house. After what seem to be hours later, we eventually laid on her bedroom floor laughing till we couldn’t breathe. To this day, if one of those songs come on if we are in the car, at a restaurant, or getting ready to go somewhere, we look at each other and laugh at the memory.

Music hasn’t always had good memories. Some of the memories are heartbreaking like performing my last song on stage or when the lyrics connected to the emotion I was feeling at that time in my life. At the age of 18, the boy who I thought was my world, left. I couldn’t explain how it felt besides empty. Everything felt dark and alone. I didn’t think anybody could understand how I felt. This one part of me just left without any real reasoning. The sun was missing and so was he. As I wallowed in my sorrow, a song came on by my favorite band, Just a Feeling by Maroon 5. The song was about a couple breaking up and the girl realizing how hard she tried just for it to still fail. After hearing the song for the first time, I realized somebody understood how it felt. Somebody understood what it felt like to be alone no matter how hard you tried to keep things together. That was when I realized that everything would be okay. One morning I woke up to see the sun was still shinning and the world was still moving. Everything was going to be okay and so was I.

A lot of my memories has music connected to it. It could be the song that I was obsessed with, the song playing in the background as I danced the night away with my best friend, or a song to help me get through a tough time. Music has and always will greet me as an old friend. It could be through memories, having a song touch a part of my soul as I’m blaring the radio, or watching my niece dance to a song her dad is singing to her. I believe in music.