The Power of Music

When I was probably about 15 years old, I made this playlist called aural medicine.

At the time I thought it was so funny because it sounds just like oral. Ha ha funny, at least for a 15-year-old. This playlist on Spotify is public, and if you choose to go listen, you can.

This playlist contained all types of somber, and sentimental songs that I knew at the time, and as the years went on, I added to it the most gut-wrenching songs that I became aware of. I would listen to this playlist every single time I felt pain.

This chapter is all about why you should not do that. The whole point of this book, at the end of the day, is to help you learn from my mistakes. Despite all my mistakes I’m somehow still here.

I’m not dumb enough to disregard the fact that I haven’t had it as bad as some of you. There truly is no room for error for some of you. That’s why this book exists.

I dare you to feel fundamentally depressed when you’re listening to give me more by Britney Spears, or starships by Nicki Minaj. It’s impossible. It’s quite impossible.

I wish I would’ve built a happy playlist. I never had one and I still don’t.

What I’ve noticed over the years, is that even when rather the lowest moments, especially when we are at our lowest moments, depressed minds don’t act like healthy minds do.

We choose to lean into this desperation... the agony. We think we can’t be saved, we think it’s too late, and instead of trying to pull ourselves out of the hole we listen to music that tells us that other people are also there. This gives us an artificial and temporary remedy for our undeniable loneliness.

To me this seemed like a good time, and I know this seems perfect for a lot of you.

But, during the times where I was closest to ending at all, were in fact the exact times where I was listening to The Night We Met by Lord Huron, or Sign of the Times by Harry Styles. I actually used to get pissed when my Spotify shuffle would go to weirdly happy song, because I couldn’t revel in my pain anymore.

All of a sudden everything felt like “you’re just a big puss Dani!” It ain’t so bad!

I don’t ask for a lot, but I literally forbid you from reading the next chapter until you make a happy playlist. If you’re a weirdo and you use Apple Music that’s fine, but hopefully you’re somewhat mentally sane and you use Spotify-– please, fill a playlist with your all-time favorite songs, your feel good songs.

That playlist should be the first resource you go to when you feel like shit. Not when you are in the depths, just when you start feeling that tingle, that tangle of… well, depression.