With A Little Help From My Musical Friends

How music gives me space to be me.

Our minds are capable of many different things, but there are two things that my mind has always been especially good at: wandering and worrying.

An early example of this took place when I was in middle school. I recall sitting in my classroom multiple times while my teacher was at the front of the room lecturing to us about one thing or another. My desk was near a large window, and I’d often look out of it while my teacher talked. If there was anything even remotely interesting going on out there, that’s where my attention would be. It happened a lot. These, of course, would be the times that the teacher would call on me to answer a question.

Unfortunately, her questions were never about the birds or squirrels or whatever else I’d been watching out the window. I’d instantly panic because I knew I hadn’t been paying attention and had no idea what she’d been talking about. I’d then worry I was going to get in trouble, or worse yet, look stupid. And that’s pretty much what always happened. She’d tell me I needed to stop daydreaming and pay closer attention during class. Then my fellow students would laugh at me and call me insulting names.

Those situations would always stress me out horribly. I’d obsessively think about them for hours. I’d be in another class later in the day, but my head was still fixated on what had happened earlier. This would lead me to make mistakes in those later classes too.

I did much better with my studies later when I was at home in my bedroom. However, it often took me a long time to settle down because I was still obsessing about what happened at school.

The teacher thinks I’m stupid. Am I stupid?

The kids called me a “dork” and a “loser.” Are they right?

Why do I have such a hard time paying attention?

Why do I do everything wrong?

Why am I so worthless?

To make myself feel better, I’d do the same thing I did most nights: turn on my radio and put on a local Top 40 station. It was the late 1970s, so there’s a good chance I was listening to popular acts like The Bee Gees, Barry Manilow, and Paul McCartney & Wings on a lot of those nights. It didn’t matter to me if it was disco, rock, or ballads. I loved and devoured just about every song that came on.

Almost instantly, I’d get wrapped up in the music I was hearing. The things that had tormented me just seconds earlier would then start to move a little bit further away from me. The music was putting some much-needed space between me and everything that had been troubling me. It gave me space from my teacher. It gave me space from the mean kids at school.

Most of all, though, it gave me space from myself. It gave me space from horrible feelings that I later discovered stemmed from depression, anxiety, and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD.)

Maybe all of those feelings didn’t completely disappear as I listened to the radio, but the music gave me distance from them, and it calmed me down enough to do my homework.

And that’s when things would turn around and get much better. I’d have my music playing while I was doing my work, but it wasn’t distracting me at all. I may have been dancing and singing in my chair as I worked, but I could focus very intently on what I was doing. The music kept giving me the extra space I needed to block out everything else and do what I needed to do.

I may have been a lonely boy who didn’t have many friends in “the real world,” but my musical friends were there for me, and they were helping me create my own private place where I could thrive.

Over the next couple of years, I went from being a pre-teen to a teenager. As I grew and started transforming into a new version of myself, I noticed that non-material things around me were also capable of changing.

Things such as the space that music had often given me. It continued to provide me distance when I needed it to, but it also evolved into something else. Something more.

As the 1970s moved into the 1980s, music stayed with me. When I started high school, it played a massive part in making me feel less lonely. While it had previously been a private thing that I didn’t share with others, I now found myself bonding with my new classmates by frequently talking with them about music. We’d talk about new songs we heard on the radio, we’d swap our favorite records and tapes with each other, and we’d go to concerts together.

Music was now giving me a different kind of space to be in — one filled with much more happiness.

And my relationship with music hasn’t changed very much in the decades since then. It still gives me space away from things that trouble me in one way or another. For example, I was feeling very ill earlier this week. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I started to panic. Then I put on some music, and it helped calm me down.

Even right now, I’ve got my headphones on and am listening to music while I write this article. There’s currently very loud construction work on my block, but my music is giving me space away from all of that.

I still sometimes have problems with my ADD, depression, and anxiety, but I thankfully now have many excellent tools that help me with those things. My two most favorite of those tools are meditation and…you guessed it…music.

I listen in my car, when I exercise, play with my cat, when my wife and I are relaxing at home, etc.

Music has always been there for me. It’s helped me through hard times, and it’s also been there during my happiest times. It’s filled my heart and constantly inspired me.

It’s helped me become the person the lonely boy from above wanted to be when he grew up.

Thank you for reading my story. If you enjoyed it, here’s another recent story I wrote. It touches upon my childhood connection to the song “Lonely Boy” by Andrew Gold.

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