Music in the Coming of Age in a Strict, Christian, Old-School Household

I remember feeling music to be my only method of escape from the endless ocean of pain that was my life as a young teen. As I floated through each day of eighth grade, ninth grade, and then the tenth, music was always my number one choice of medicine. Alas, during those years, life was truly a hard journey, indeed. I mean, between the eighth-grade science and the not knowing how to talk to my crush and the stuffing the back of my pants to make my butt look bigger because I wanted to look like the new girl all the boys in my pod were drooling over (yes I did this), I could see how the teen pressures got to me. I also vividly remember that I wholeheartedly believed my taste in music to be a gift to mankind, albeit the more grungy and alternative percentage of mankind. Quite a bit of my early teenage years is actually pretty much blocked from my memory because...duh. But the bits and pieces that still stick out to me like a sore thumb all have songs and emotions associated with them, which is basically perfect for this situation. Let's jump in at the beginning, shall we?

So, based on the first memory that I can drag out of my mind from around the beginning of eighth grade, this is the first song that comes to mind. This song and its artist were very influential to me during my "Sad Girl Years" as I like to call them. The Sad Girl Years was basically a long period of time where I seemed to be obsessed with being...well...sad. It probably sounds horrific, especially in the wake of the world's condition today. Happiness today is something people WANT to grasp onto because we all know how fleeting it can be. However, from the ages of 13 until about 16, I enjoyed my sadness. I was obsessed with the grungy, angsty, dark, sad girl aesthetic. If my mother had let me get an uneven haircut and bleach my tips and dye them blood-red, I would have done it. The combat boots, flannels, and exaggerated side bang? That was me. The obsession with bands like P!ATD, BMTH, and more? Also me. The blocky black eyeliner, dirty Converse, and wearing long sleeve shirts year-round because you-know-why? Unfortunately, all me. There was an awful trend of romanticizing sadness, depression, and pain to make it "cool", and I regret to say that this trend was the aesthetic I chose for my early teen years. I even have the Tumblr account to prove it:

To be fair, not everyone at my middle school and high school was in love with the idea of emotion like I was. Personally, I was already unknowingly living with the effects of seasonal affective disorder and anxiety. After being bullied in 7th grade for my constant mood swings and crying all the time, I kind of...took my sadness and reveled in it. Needless to say, that was quite the most damaging approach to dealing with what was going on in my head, and I don't encourage it. To continue this ridiculous trek through memory lane, songs like Can You Feel My Heart by Bring Me The Horizon and Dark Paradise by Lana del Rey heightened the emotions I could never explain, yet never wanted to let go of. These emotions became my teenage identity.

The song above is one that stuck with me because of the heartbreaking message behind the lyrics. They spoke to me, although they certainly did not relate to my life at the time. However, the soft croon of Elena Tonra's voice poured through my ears and straight to my heart, bringing me to tears curled up on the floor of my bedroom, as was my habit back then. Every time I think back to the things I liked when I was 13, 14, 15, and 16 I remember the type of images that represented my interests and aesthetic.

Getting teen angsty enough for ya? Dear readers, if you aren't cringing yet, please know that I am. My weapons (social media apps haha) of choice used to hunt for "grungy dark aesthetic" images and things that fed my interests of those years included Wattpad, Pinterest, weheartit, and the side of Instagram that hosted mostly textpost accounts, overlay accounts, and the likes of the Furches twins. (I know...I know.) Moving right along to the songs that pop into my brain when I think of how I used to sit on the school bus in the darkness of the morning with my head against the window and my hood up, drowning in the apparent awfulness of middle/high school:

And with that, I'll be leaving it at Sights by London Grammar, Holes in the Sky by M83 ft. HAIM, and White Noise by PVRIS (the above videos). I could go on and on about the songs I blasted through my cheap earbuds as I awkwardly shuffled down the loud halls of my middle & high school, hating myself and everyone around me for no reason. I could go on and on about the metalcore, the indie, the alternative-rock, the electro-pop, and the post-punk that made up my playlist of these years. But you'd much rather give it a listen for yourself, yeah? Yeah.

(If you want to listen to the full version you can look it up on Apple music. And if you don't have Apple music because you prefer Spotify, let's be friends. :) I'm obviously joking; you're weird and the Apple/Spotify feud definitely lives on.)

So we've come to the end of this reminiscing party. Quite something to see the old me and compare her to the woman I am now. The songs I chose back then gave me the space I needed to put all my confusing teen emotions in one place. The music of my early teen years helped me gather all the never-ending thoughts and worries and confessions and put them in a box that I now leave right where it belongs in 2016. You'll find throughout the playlist that the tone of the songs glides gradually along a spectrum from suffering to brooding to hoping. Honestly, looking back on those years, I realize the importance of not only music as an outlet but also the importance of paying attention to the teenagers in your household. I did admit that being "sad" seemed to be an obsession for me at that age, but I was also truly confused and anxious and I DID need the attention that I sought. I remember going through not one but multiple emotional breakdowns in my room, in school, even in church. As embarrassing as these memories are for me, I know now that they were genuine cries for help. I grew up in a household where sadness and depression weren't real, it was just a sign that you needed to "pray" more, or that you were not close enough to God. The only music I was "allowed" to listen to by my mother was gospel, so I grasped any chance I could when she wasn't around to listen to the music that spoke to the emotions that I couldn't communicate. My music taste as an adult now is quite different and much broader (thank goodness), but from time to time I give a song or two from back then a listen. It reminds me of how the way I was back then helped me grow into a person who knows the importance of dealing with emotion in a healthy and mature way.