I Used to Let Music Decide My Life

December 2025

A letter to the girl I was becoming

There was a time in my life when music did the talking for me.

I didn’t yet know how to name what I was feeling, so I waited for a song to do it first. I would drive with the radio on, heart open, hoping that whatever came through the speakers would confirm what I already knew but wasn’t ready to admit.

Looking back, I smile at her — the girl who believed that if the right song came on at the right moment, the universe would give her permission to change her life.

She was braver than she knew.

That day — the one I still remember — I was standing at the edge of a decision. Not a dramatic one on the surface. Just the quiet kind that asks you to choose yourself when loving someone else would be easier. I loved deeply then. I cared too much. I mistook empathy for responsibility and compassion for obligation.

And yet… something shifted.

For the first time, I saw my life from the outside. Not as a story about who needed me, but as a story that belonged to me. I realized I didn’t have to organize my days around relationships, emotions, or fixing what wasn’t mine to fix. I could be a student. An employee. A woman becoming herself.

That realization didn’t arrive gently. Growth rarely does.

Letting go felt like tearing something open — like admitting that love alone wasn’t enough to sustain a future. I learned, painfully and honestly, that you can care deeply and still walk away. That you can offer your hand and still know when it’s time to release it.

What I didn’t understand then — but do now — is that this was one of my first acts of leadership.

Leadership over my own life.

To the girl I was then:
You weren’t weak for caring too much.
You weren’t wrong for trying.
You weren’t selfish for choosing yourself.

You were practicing boundaries before you knew the word.
You were learning that you cannot heal someone by sacrificing yourself.
You were ending a chapter so a fuller one could begin.

Today, I no longer wait for songs to tell me what to do. But I still believe they were there for a reason. They held space when I couldn’t. They mirrored truths I wasn’t yet ready to speak.

And maybe that’s the gift of looking back — realizing that even in our most confused moments, we were already becoming who we needed to be.

I didn’t lose my heart that day.

I learned how to carry it.