Music and Vulnerability

Being told to control my emotions has been a common piece of advice for me throughout my life.  Former friends have tugged on my arms to try and moderate the ways of how I expressed myself.  My parents also have continuously taken me aside and have told me to adapt a life that wasn't as expressive as mine for my safety.

"People see your weakest spots and use them against you," I remember them warning me. 

Because of what some people consider my naivety, I have been hurt many times by the hands of others, but these pains do not mark me special.  What I have learned first hand is how part of the world sees opportunity in the holes of people.  Initially, it shot me in the heart, to finally face a worldly truth that some people find pleasure in salting the wounds of others.  During this personally difficult time, I felt I was being punished for being honest with myself, punished for being vulnerable, and punished for trusting the world I lived in. 

And it's in this exhaustive moment that music saved me.  The unfiltered plea in Queen's "Somebody To Love", the shameless desperation in The Clash's "Should I Stay Or Should I Go", the confusion of existence in Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the remorse of living, loss, and conquest in Johnny Cash's "Hurt".  It were these songs and more that revived me into believing once more that vulnerability wasn't a weakness, but a strength.  The strength to admit that you just yearn for somebody, to admit that you're a fool for someone's love, to admit that you don't know what's going on, to admit that you are broken and have lost many. 

Music is a beautiful gift and it gave me the strength to admit that I was only human.