The past several days have been crazy. It took me a while to come up with what I wanted to write about. I know the presidential election will be a big topic lots of other students will write about. I want to take a refreshing breath and just start small. Here's something that's completely unrelated to politics.

I recently started a thing with my friends whenever we study together. I don't know how it came up in my head but it just did. I decided to make it a thing where we would each play one song from our playlist and then the next person would play one from theirs and then so on. I guess this idea of playing music came to me because I had a rough week last week. I cried and broke down simply way more in a whole week than I would've liked. My music usually brought me comfort but for some reason it left me for a little bit. I cried and broke down but didn't really provide my friends an explanation. I'm close enough to them that I figured they deserved an explanation. But there were just so many things I couldn't say. Or rather, I didn't know how to put it into words. Playing my songs out loud just lifted a part of the sadness off of me. I was scared at first because most of my songs are pretty mellow. I just like how pretty it sounds or how much the lyrics relate to me or what I want. I have trouble expressing myself because I didn't really learn how to express myself during my childhood. It wasn't something that I did naturally. I guess you could say I got the "genes" from my mom though I'm pretty sure that that's not scientifically accurate. Having the words flow out into the room for my friends kind of opened my eyes. It was like "dang, this is what I was feeling like." And then sometimes we would talk about the song while doing homework. Sometimes we would just shut up and listen. Sometimes there wasn't anything so say because it was just that everyone understood. No one really sang along with their song. It was nice. Of course, being my friends, their goal is to make me laugh and feel comfortable with them, we got Rick Rolled a few times and had a few silly songs mixed into the playlists. It made me realize how strong music can be. How much unsaid words can be explained through music and their lyrics. It just made me feel so much safer. Safer that they could understand without needed me to tell them. Safer that I could understand what they were feeling. I didn't really understand the actual power of music before this.

It's amazing how we can communicate without actually saying anything. For an introverted person like me, it's what really makes me happy. Sure, sometimes words are good too but sometimes it's just how the words shape a story and relate to you. It's almost as though your own playlist of music is a storybook of your own feelings.