The Pantera Party

As I stood in the kitchen talking to Sarah, I suddenly became aware of the deafening silence coming from the living room. It was off. Someone had turned off my Pantera CD. The person who silenced my outward thoughts, my escape from the anger that sweltered inside me, would pay. “Who turned off my Pantera?” I screamed at everyone in the living room. As my face turned beet red with vexation, I almost popped a vein in my forehead. Complete silence. No one dared confess they were the fool who had awoken the beast. I wrathfully pressed play on the CD player in an attempt to focus my exorbitant amount of rage on something other than the living, breathing bodies before me. I stomped back to the kitchen to finish my conversation with Sarah. As the CD screams the words “the releasing of anger can better any medicine under the sun” I thought to myself how truly accurate those words were. Pantera got me. All the teenage angst, being lost, rejected, alone. They seemed to understand my very being and expressed it in a way I, myself lacked.

Silence, again. Who kept doing this? Ferociously I tore back into the living room. Everyone gazed at the ground, desperately avoiding eye contact. I didn’t even ask this time. I hastily turned the CD back on and glared at everyone in the room. A warning, this better not happen again. “Re-spect, walk, are you talking to me?” again, Pantera said it perfectly. Not one person in that room respected me, and as far as I was concerned, they could walk. Leave and never return, just as the song so appropriately expressed. Every time they turned off the music, I was reminded of the time I was blasting my “Cowboy’s From Hell” CD, and my mother cut the power to my room. I broke another phone that day. I never wanted to be violent, never had any desire to hurt another human being. But I had to release that burning anger. And when someone hindered that, it just boiled hotter inside me. Building as lava in an active volcano, ready to explode and melt everything, everyone around.

As I sat in the living room drinking my beer, the song “War Nerve” plays. “For every f@#$*ing second a pathetic being pisses on me and judges what I am in one paragraph, look here f@#$*k you all!!!” Phillip Anselmo vocalizes my angry, irrational thoughts. I fight back tears, remembering my algebra class. I was a freshman, a nerd. I did not fit in with the jocks and cheerleaders. These kids had never even spoken to me. As I walked to the teacher's desk to turn in my assignment, I trip and almost fall. The roar of their laughter tore into my already wounded pride. Why did they not like me? They didn’t even know me. I skipped that class, just once. Hiding in the bathroom like a coward.

Today after much therapy, I am happily married, to the person who was shutting of the music at the party, nonetheless. We were not romantically involved at the time. His desire was for me to chase him into another room where he would confess his love. I obviously was not as alone as I felt. Listening to the heavy, loud music which spoke precisely of how I felt, helped me to release the anger in a healthier way. It helped me not feel so depressed over the trials of my life, fore I did not feel quite as alone.

I no longer listen to Pantera, or any heavy metal for that matter. I am no longer that wounded, angry teenager. I sometimes will put on one of their songs, just to remind myself of how far I’ve come. I am grateful to have had the support that music often gives us. I do still listen to songs with meaningful lyrics, they speak to my soul. No longer do I seek to soothe the savage beast in my tortured soul. I now seek out lyrics and melodies that reflect my happiness and support tranquility. I feel it is healthy to feel our feelings and face them head on. Only then, can we heal.