Musical Sanctuary

Music was a source of strength and healing for me. It was the only thing I discovered in my life that gave me any sort of constant peace or joy. I learned very early in my life that music was an outlet for me. Growing up during elementary school, we were assigned music class. I really enjoyed music class in school and when I reached higher grades when music was considered an elective class instead of a required class, I made sure I had music class. I never learned how to play an instrument, although still today that is one of the things on my "To Do" list is to be able to play the acoustic guitar. I did sign up for choir classes though. I have always loved music; since I was a very small child. I grew up listening to a lot of Country Music and 80's rock as my parents listed to that and that music was always streaming on our radio stations. This was in the years when Rap/R&B was not the most popular music and really was not streaming and dominating the radio stations. There were two female country artists that I was immediately drawn to growing up. Jo Dee Messina and LeAnn Rimes. These two women helped me fall in love with country music but I could also relate so much to their music that I was immediately drawn to listening to them. The musical background being shared is helping you, my readers to understand just how important this aspect of my life was to me and why my experience with bullying tied to music affected me so much...

I wanted to be involved with choir through my school years because I loved music and I loved singing along to songs. I would spend countless hours after school or at night sitting in my bedroom, with my window open, music playing (usually country at that time) and I would sing along to the songs on the radio or listen to my CD's. I would spend a huge amount of time doing this each day/night because it was the only time where I could set aside whatever was going on in my life and get completely consumed within the music. This is something I still do today and I need to have music playing no matter what I am doing whether it is driving in the car, doing homework, writing these blogs or cleaning. Music became my "Muse" and it's still extremely important to me today.

I spent my middle school years (7th and 8th grade) consumed with choir class. I enjoyed school for the learning purposes, but choir class was my favorite. My 7th grade year I had the opportunity to meet an amazing choir teacher. I believe it was her first year teaching at my middle school, but this lady took notice to my desire for music and in a small way fueled my desire for music by inviting me go to with some other students who were not all in my class to go sing at a High school event. I felt so special to be asked to go and it made me excited to know that someone noticed my desire for music in that sense. This lady does not know that she had that much of an impact on me when it came to music and funny thing is as an adult, she is now a friend of mine on the social network Facebook. To this lady who noticed this desire, I honestly thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea how much it meant to me for you to notice this and invite me to this event. I hope she knows it is her but if it helps for her to know if she is reading this...I still remember all the warm up exercises we did and my favorite was the "Pa-pa-pa"...I then spent all of my high school years making sure I was involved in choir, I also was a part of my church youth group worship team for a few years during those High school years as well. So thank you Mrs. "Middle school choir teacher from North Jr. High". :)

...The reason I shared all of this is because I had an experience with bullying having to do with music. Back when I was in 7th and 8th grade there were no such things as cell phones, Ipods, MP3 players. We had Walkmans and disc-mans. I had a Walkman that I listened to tapes of recorded songs that I would have to record off of the radio stations. I was given a Walkman from my dad one night when he got home from work. He also gave me a pair of headphones and told me "now you can listen to music on the bus or while waiting for the bus". He told me I had to take good care of it and then he would see about getting me a disc-man when he had some extra money. I was so excited that my dad gave me this and I brought it to school so I would have music to listen to while waiting for the bus and just ignore what people said about me...

I was standing outside the front of the school building and I had a couple girls approach me. They pretended to be interested in my Walkman and wanted to know what I was listening to. I told them I was listening to recorded country songs off of the radio station and they told me "Country music is dumb. You should not have a Walkman because you listen to stupid music". I didn't really care what they were saying because I could turn up the volume and essentially ignore them, which I did. A few minutes later one of the girls took my Walkman, yanked open the tape compartment and broke my tape in half, then proceeded to snap the door off the tape compartment and slam my Walkman on the ground which caused it to shatter into pieces. I was devastated and heart broken. I began to cry and immediately I was being teased for crying...

How could I go home and face my dad that day when he got home from work? I had to tell him that some girls were being mean to me, and broken my Walkman. I had to somehow tell him that I was not responsible enough to keep the Walkman safe. I was trying to show him that I could have something nice and take care of it...Now I had to face him and tell him that his special gift to me was broken. Surely, he would not buy me a disc-man after this...That night I told him what happened at school and to my surprise he was not angry with me but angry with the girls who did it and who were picking on me. I do believe at that point my mom called the school the next day and set up an appointment to speak to the principal about what had been going on with the bullying. The principal did little if nothing about it other than to talk to these girls who of course would not admit to any wrong doing or destruction of property.

Those same girls left me alone for a few days to let things settle down. I think those girls left me alone for about a week before they started in on me again. During the week of "sanity" my dad talked to me and told me that since it was not my fault that the Walkman got wrecked, he would get me a disc-man since I had begun buying CD's of my own now. This was during the time when CD's were just becoming the new wave of instant music from the cassette tapes. I still remember the color of that dis-man. It was a Colby, baby-blue in color. I do believe my dad also gave a me pair of new headphones to go with it...I had that disc-man for about two weeks as I was careful to hide it well from those girls and to only take it out on the bus after I was seated down and so were they. I began to also sit in the very front of the bus so I would be in the drivers viewing distance and hoping the bullying would calm down. It did for a few weeks on the bus, but it started back up when other kids, new kids began riding our bus and all the front seats were taken.

I once again was standing outside of the school waiting for my bus to get there. I had been very careful to conceal my disc-man around those girls. This particular day, I had bought a new CD a few days ago and I was anxious to listen to it; so without even thinking, I pulled out my new Colby disc-man and began to listen to it while I waited for the bus to get there. I didn't even get through  a whole song when one of the girls who helped break my Walkman, ran up and passed me, grabbed the disc-man from my hands and took off around the corner of the building. I didn't dare chase after her or tell a teacher because my fear was that it would only make things worse for me...So, I waited until she came back empty handed. I slowly began my walk around the building. I began to see little black pieces of plastic and I started to get teary-eyed. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw my brand new CD broken into pieces...I looked about 30ft in front of me and here I see my prized possession broken into 4 big pieces...I began to cry. I was so angry that I wanted to kick the crap out of this girl, but I knew it was not possible. I had wished so hard for someone to do to them what they were doing to me because I was being picked on so badly and for what? For who I was? What clothes I wore? What music I listened to? It didn't make any sense to me...

That day I did not get on the bus but I walked the mile home with the broken pieces of my disc-man in my backpack. I cried the whole way home. I was so distracted by my feelings and what happened, that I almost got hit by a car...I came right to my dad bawling my eyes out and had to again tell him that my prized possession that he got for me was now in pieces in my backpack...He tried to fix it for me, but it could not be fixed. It was at that moment that he told me that I was not allowed to bring those things to school anymore as it was not fair to have them wrecked by kids who were mean and didn't know the concept of respect for others.

This memory sticks out in my mind a lot because it happened over the one thing I felt no one could take away from me, my music...I began to listen to music even more, with almost everything I did because it was the only thing that brought me any glimmer of sanity from the bullying and I could just be me.

I think that this is also why music is so very dominant in my life today and has been for many years. My genera in music has expanded a lot as I listen to all types of music now and I have the strangest music collection. I still listen to a lot of country music, however, I have opened myself up to other forms of music that I once hated or could not stand such as Rap/R&B and Hip-Hop.

My hope is that no one would ever go through something like this as I did, however, if you have but in the place of the disc-man/Walkman, it was an Ipod, MP3 player or whatever new music technology is available then you know what I am talking about. I pray that no one ever has to deal with that, the humiliation, devastation, and sadness I felt at having those thing taken from me and wrecked for doing nothing to anyone but "being" there...I don't want my readers to think that everything I ever owned got wrecked from bullying because it didn't, however, a lot of those things did.

~Melissa