Over the years there have been days where my emotions became overwhelming. Sometimes to the point where I would break down and cry uncontrollably, and sometimes to the point where I’m on top of the world and as happy as happy can be. There comes a time when people have to leave places, and leaving Guyana, the country I had lived in for three years, was hard, but the hardest part was losing a really close friend of mine because he was leaving Guyana at the time too. I was crushed, but now I look back and realize there’s one thing that helped me get through it; music. I believe that music is capable of healing even the worst of internal wounds.

It all started a month before I left. My best friend of three years was also leaving Guyana and it was something I never wanted to think about, at least not until it happened. He was, and still is, one of the best friends I have ever had. He asked me to the Valentine dance that our school was having (which was the first dance I had ever been to), he introduced me PC games that I now play quite a lot, and he never once thought my music taste was odd. The fact that he was leaving dawned on me the night before he left. I had spent the whole day at his house because it was going to be the last time I saw him in a while, and before I knew it, it was time for me to go home. I had to say bye. It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I am generally terrible at saying goodbyes, and this was by far one of the hardest ones yet. I didn’t cry in front of him, but as soon as I got into the car with my dad, I broke down. Of the fifteen years I have spent in this world, I do not think I had ever been sadder.

The realization that I would not get to see him as often hit really hard. I would sleep in longer than usual so I would not have to be awake; my appetite shrunk to that of an infant, and nothing really made me happy. I just didn’t care about myself anymore. I am pretty good at putting a cap on my emotions but for the next month I had very little control over them. I would burst into tears at the dinner table, and even when I went out. The fact that my parents were very understanding about what I was going through was really nice, but if it was not for music, I would probably still be in the same state I was in now.

The sadness was pretty overwhelming. There was this pain in my chest that would not cease to exist; a gaping wound that needed to be fixed, but how? For as long as I can remember, music has always been there for me. When I was younger, I would borrow my house-help’s phone and fall asleep listening to X-FM (one of my favorite radio stations). Whenever I have trouble falling asleep, I sing until I get tired. Whenever I’ve felt down, I have turned to music, so the logical thing to do in this situation would be to listen to music, wouldn’t it? And that is exactly what I did. Music provided a soothing coolant for the burning in my chest. A warm whisper that constantly reassured me that I was going to get through it and that I was going to be alright.

During that time, my pillow had become a sponge of some sorts. Absorbing a surprising amount of tears for someone that doesn’t drink that much water, it was however, definitely getting better. I slowly but surely started eating again, and whenever I felt tears coming along, I plugged in my earphones. The sound seemed to travel straight to my chest, patching up the gaping wound that was causing me pain. Leaving Guyana and losing people I cared dearly about was hard, but having my music with me made it bearable, and at this very moment I believe my gaping wound is now a medium-sized scab. My internal wound was healed by the magic that is music.