The Playlist That Saved Me

There’s a version of me that only exists in headphones.

That version doesn’t flinch when the phone rings at 1:30 a.m.
Doesn’t tremble while scrubbing blood out of a bathroom floor.
Doesn’t crack when someone says, “He’s gone.”
He just hits play. And disappears into the song.

Music didn’t save my life.
But it sure as hell kept me alive long enough to figure out how to save it myself.

The first time I broke, it was to Cyndi Lauper.
“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
Don’t laugh.
It was my high school Pop Concert. I had a solo. My mom was in the ICU. I was holding it together like a goddamn magician. Smile painted on. Body upright. Voice steady.
Until intermission.
I slipped into the empty balcony while glitter and neon screams filled the theater. And I collapsed in the dark.
Sixteen years old and cracked open to a synth beat.
I can’t hear that song without tasting static in my mouth.

After that, the sound got louder.
The Prodigy. Deftones.
I didn’t want songs—I wanted weapons.
Something to out-scream the thoughts I didn’t know how to process.
Grief? Anger? Shame? Who cares. Crank the volume.
Let the bass rattle the rot out of my ribcage.

Some days it was Third Eye Blind—because I wanted to pretend I was okay.
Some days it was Portishead—because I knew I wasn’t.
I built entire eras of my life around the songs that could shoulder the weight when I couldn’t.

There was a phase—no, scratch that, a chapter—where Nine Inch Nails was the only thing that made sense.
Cold. Clinical. Bleeding. Alive.
I’d sit in my car with my fists clenched on the wheel, engine off, stereo on, letting Trent Reznor talk to the part of me that didn’t want to exist anymore—but still did. Barely.

You want to understand a man?
Don’t ask him what he believes in.
Ask him what he plays when his hands are shaking and he’s staring down the barrel of another fucking Tuesday.

Ask him what song was playing when he found out his brother was dead.
Ask him what was on when he finally signed the DNR for his father.
Ask him what played in the background while he screamed into a pillow so no one would hear.

I don’t trust people who don’t have a playlist for pain.
And I don’t believe anyone who says music doesn’t matter.

The right song at the right moment isn’t art.
It’s resurrection.

The thing about playlists is this: they’re not chronological.
They’re circular.
You keep coming back to the same tracks. The ones that knew you better than your friends did.
You don’t outgrow them. You just learn to dance differently when they hit.

I’ve got a song for every version of me that tried to die.
And another one for each time I didn’t.

So no, this isn’t about music taste.
It’s about survival.

What’s on your playlist when the world ends?

Because I’ve been scoring the apocalypse for twenty-five years.
And I’m still here.
Still pressing play.
Still waiting for the beat to drop.