"Without music, life would be a mistake."

This quote is true, to a complete level. I'm a fifteen year old teen, and I'm pretty average. Love my friends, my family, and I love music with all my heart. Music is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I used to think, "Who cares it's just sounds." I was so wrong.

I first started caring about music in seventh grade. I was 12 and I got my iPod shuffle. I wasn't a very social person, so bus rides were absolute misery, where the pale, skinny girl had to listen to the people judging her. The night after I got it, I loaded it with the first things I saw in my older sister's library for the bus ride tomorrow. Avenged Sevenfold, Black Veil Brides, A Day to Remember, All Time Low, and Linkin Park were among those.

The next morning, at 7:12 I got on the bus, just like every morning. I flopped down with the grace of a blind eel. I rammed the earbuds as far as I could into my ears and hit play. "Hands Held High" poured into my ears and dripped into my soul. "Turn my mic up louder, I've got to say something. Light weights, step it aside when we come in. Feel it in your chest, the syllables get pumpin'." It felt like I was coming home. Something broke open, and music gripped my world with an iron claw.

Music isn't just sounds. It's a melody in a dorm room, some words from a broken heart, a beat in your chest, and so much more. People can use it to express anything. Guilt for leaving the love of your life, like "Dear God" by Avenged Sevenfold, loneliness, like "Far from Home" by Five Finger Death Punch, it all means something. And more often then not, that something can make that song all the more beautiful.

The strength of music is even seen in history. Don't believe me? In 1779, a sailor recalled being caught in violent storm and begging god for deliverance. He remembered all the time God pulled him through, and was so over come he wrote a song. "How sweet, the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see." This song, entitled "Amazing Grace" became an anthem of salvation and freedom. Slaves took it up as their path to freedom, Christian took it up as the anthem of the church, and artists still sing it today. It has a power to it no one ever though would exist. It's music at it's finest, it's strongest, and it's most amazing.

Music is every where and everything. Music was how one of the most influential people in my life and I met. His name was Dallas, and he sang at my church. His voice was amazing, especially for someone who was on oxygen, and I told him so. He believed in the strength of music and kept that with him all his life. He's gone now and every time I hear any song with a guitar ringing, any time I hear a southern voice singing, it's like a time machine, and I'm transported to all the days we had together and the first time I heard him sing. Music brought us together, and even with him gone, is still keeping us together. It'll forever keep him alive for me, and forever immortalize how precious music is for me.

I believe that in all of this world, there is only a very few things that strengthens us when we're weak, reminds us when all is forgotten, rings true in the darkness, and keeps our heads up high. One: religion, two: love and friends, three: music. In the end, music speaks. Listen to it.