The beats of music

By Princess P

Music is an artistic string of instruments that connects and draws people in their own unique way. For some people, music is just a way of physically expressing how they feel by jumping around to the beat. But for Jazmine Heredia, music captivates her in an indescribable way. She’s dropped into a world where music emotionally pulls her in.

Jazmine Heredia found herself struggling through transitioning from middle school to high school. But with music, she was able to find comfort and her escape.

“[I realized] somewhere in middle school because middle school wasn’t the best for me… So just the fact that music was able to, like, help me accept how I’m feeling, whether that was, like, sad, angry, upset, music was basically just what I could listen to let go of everything,” said Heredia.

Music didn’t only help her with escaping how she was feeling but it also helped distract her from what was going on at home. She often felt like she couldn’t talk to anyone and music helped her feel seen and heard. It was like a person telling her everything she wanted to hear.

“It felt like I needed something to just escape everything, like my family, since I knew if I told them they’d think I was crazy or something and I couldn’t talk to anyone. Music helped me feel seen by allowing me to express emotions and it felt like someone was understanding how I feel,” Heredia said.

Ever since Jazmine discovered her love for music, it’s helped her break one of her habits and learn from them. She would bottle up her emotions until she would have a massive breakdown. She learned how to come to terms with her feelings and allowed herself to express her emotions by talking to someone.

“I have a really hard time telling people how I’m feeling; I feel like I have this habit of holding everything in until I have this one big mental breakdown. So I feel like music helped me express those feelings a little bit and come to terms with them and try to tell someone that I’m feeling like that or something,” Heredia stated.

Music wasn’t the only thing that made her feel seen and heard. Her brother was one of the people that understood her. There would be times where she would come home and he would just know that something was wrong.

“I can come home looking the same way I do everyday yet my brother can tell if I’m not feeling okay. He also knows that if I say ‘I’m fine,’ I want to be left alone and he won't push me to talk about my feelings. I know I can act like myself and basically have no filter around him,” Heredia said.

With music and help from her brother, she’s learned how to be herself. She’s learned how music can pull her out of reality and easily lift her mood up in seconds. She can freely talk about her emotions instead of bottling them up. She was able to find her “person” to talk to but instead of talking one on one, it was the flow of the beats and lyrics.