I wish I didn't know what the words meant

"Sometimes things find you when you need them find you, I believe that. And for me, it's usually song lyrics." 

Peyton Sawyer, One Tree Hill

Music. Music is always on for me. When the world fails me, music is there. When my heart broke, music. Happiness? Music. Sadness? You guessed it. 

I grew up with a grandmother that listened to classical and a mother that listened to a little bit of everything. My biological father enjoyed country and old classics, and when my mother re-married when I was eight, I was introduced to good, old fashioned, rock. To say that I ended up with a broad musical taste would be an understatement. After nineteen years of listening to music with me, Rob still shakes his head some days as my iPod bounces from Elvis Presley to Westside Connection to the Decemberists to AC/DC.

Music has always been about the lyrics to me. They speak for my emotions when my brain just can't find the words. There are songs that don't mean a lot lyrically, but mean something about the moment. I remember my grandmother watching "The Great Waltz", explaining the "Tale from the Vienna Woods." I have a memory of laying on the couch when I was little with John Cougar Mellencamp's "Ain't Even Done With The Night" playing in the background. Ever seen eighty people dance like mad at "Home For a Rest" by Spirit of the West? I have. You can close your eyes and listen, having it bring you back to the time and place of that memory. It's like my own personal time machine, though you can't really control the memories and emotions that a song evokes.

Almost a year after the death of Chester Bennington, his co-lead singer, Mike Shinoda, wrote an album worth of music. Some of it had been written before, but most of it had been written after. An album aptly titled "Post Traumatic"

He released three songs, the first being "Place To Start", the second being "Over Again", and the third being, if I recall correctly, "Watching As I Fall". He made music videos for them himself, and released this raw music to the world with the promise of an album coming. I listened to all three. "Place To Start" was intense, and it finished with actual recordings of messages that had been left for him by friends in the days after Chester's death. It was "Over Again", however, that gave me some sort of insight in to what my husband may have been feeling, still processing the death of his friend overseas over ten years later.

"Sometimes, sometimes you don't say goodbye once, you say goodbye over and over and over again, over and over and over again."

Every year, on April 1st, my guts would clench as I prepared for the inevitable emotions that were about to come forward from my husband. Manny died on April 22nd, but rather than that being the day that Rob 'chose' to remember him, it felt like the second April hit, our family was doomed to live with the monster that is grief for the next 22 days. Not having lost anyone, I sometimes resented it, a fact that I unfairly voiced to Rob countless times - mostly because he associated the number 22 with Manny, and not with our son, who was also born on the 22nd of his birth month. I lost my grandmother, someone I was incredibly close to, at the age of 13, so this was the only death that I actually had to relate to. Somehow I felt they compared, a fact that has, since then, been very much corrected.

Rob connected with the music in a way that I had hoped. I am constantly throwing music at him in hopes that he will let it heal him the way it heals me. It's something I frequently overestimate about people - that somehow, they will understand everything just that much better if they listen to a song.

When the rest of the album came out, I listened and felt the heartbreak he and his bandmates must have been feeling, having lost their best friend and brother. So many questions unanswered. If I were to lose someone this way, I imagine this is exactly how I would feel, I thought.

Shortly after the release of Post Traumatic, the television show "The Vampire Diaries" came to an end. In the final episode, there was a song that I found so hauntingly beautiful that I looked it up only to discover that, in true television form, they had edited the meaning of the song out to utilize the beauty of it, but not it's true nature. "Hold On" by Chord Overstreet quickly made it's way on to my music queue. 

The day after Joe's death, for the first time ever, I found myself not able to listen to music despite the unceasing yearning to turn to that old friend that I knew would help make sense of my emotions. The day after that, I could listen to only Mike Shinoda's album. Days after that, I learned that it wasn't just this album that I would identify with, but other songs, as well. Songs that never once made me sad prior to July 13th, 2018, but now could bring forth an unending river of tears. I now belonged to a club that no one ever imagines themselves being a part of, the club of those left behind by suicide, and some of the words in these songs felt like they were written for me.

I have playlists for every one of my strongest memories. My husband and how much I love him, our children, cruising around with my friends on summer nights, listening to music at home with my oldest sister...and now, I have songs that I hear and think immediately of my brother taking his life. 

If you should find yourself inclined, please feel free to give this song a listen. The idea of the songs being written for me comes from this song, as well as the title of this blog entry. It pretty much sums up how I feel about all of Linkin Park's music, and now, about Mike Shinoda's entire album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzQ8ZAMF4eM