The Power of Music and Twenty-One Pilots

I was driving home the other night listening to my playlist, having a grand old time. Specifically, I listened to “We Don’t Believe What’s On TV” by Twenty One Pilots off their Blurryface album. I’ve listened to and loved this song since it came out in 2015. I saw them perform it live when I saw them in February of 2016. I screamed along to the lyrics, to the iconic “yeah, yeah, yeah” of the song. Tyler Joseph, the band’s lead singer, split the stadium into two, and we competed against each other in who could sing the loudest.

It was exhilarating to feel the words reverberate in my chest through my spine all the way down into my toes. I remember the feeling of my throat burning, trying to be as loud as possible, the biggest smile stretched on my face. But the lyrics never hit me as strong as they did as when I was driving home.

I’ve been through a lot in my 21 (hehe ironic) years on this Earth. Since I was a child, I’ve dealt with death; I experienced what alcohol can really do to a man and went through one of the scariest moments of my life when I had to get a full spinal fusion at 13. That was my very first surgery, and it wasn’t my last. I’ll be honest; I never really expected to live past 18. Not that I planned on not living that far, or to where I’m at now; I just always thought I would’ve died in some freak accident or something. I’d only really planned my life until about 18. I wasn’t the “Dancing Queen” anymore; I wasn’t young or sweet, or 17.

But here I am, still alive and kicking for the most part. Yet those moments in my life that drove me into a dark pit where I never thought I’d get out of still haunt me. Most of the time, I forget about those feelings, just to focus on the here and the now and not the past. But sometimes, when they do creep up on me, they hit me hard.

When I got hit with this wave of emotions, it was when I heard the lines “I don’t care what’s in your hair / I just wanna know what’s on your mind / I used to say I wanna die before I’m old / But because of you I might think twice.” Tears started to form, and the lights on the road turned blurry. They went away as soon as they formed, and it hit me: I understood those lyrics on a deeper level, deeper than I ever felt before. I knew what place Tyler was in and knew 100% what those words meant.

I cried. Tears fell because I finally knew that I found someone that made me think twice. I never expected to think that love would change my life, but I can tell you that it did. Twenty One Pilots guided me to see that the darkness that I felt will go away; it will move on, and you’ll get better—just one day at a time.

Sly |-/