The door slammed open and I launched myself at my bed as the door closed after hitting the wall and ricocheting back to its former position. I bit my pillow; it yielded. I held back a scream so terrible and wretchedly sickening that in doing so I probably saved the windows to the houses in the tri-state area from breaking. The world had gotten to the better of me- again. What should I do now? I desperately wanted to just forget everything that had happened during the day; thinking about it made me even more savage. I wrapped my arms around myself and dug my nails into my shoulders. The more activity I did, the more I would tire out and soon drift off to sleep, and to rouse from my slumber refreshed but unwillingly to reemerge into society. My whole body shook, and I thrashed around in my bed like a possessed child, and continued to do that for two minutes, but it seemed like days to me.

I took a deep breath. My body still shook, but I was numbing my brain like I had so diligently learned to do under extreme circumstances like I was experiencing right now. It’s funny how humans often get into questionable habits of coping with stress only when they experience the worst stress for the first time. The habit, however, stays with them, if not the stress. I let out my breath. I maniacally pulled my hair to my mouth and focused on the pain on the outside rather than the pain on the inside. I suddenly sprang up, looked around my room, and grabbed the first thing I saw- my iPod.

It was old, a classic video and huge compared to the new nano ones, but it was faithful and it worked, and held more songs than I could count. It was often a reliable companion on the bus ride to and from school, and a source of entertainment when I got bored of music and wanted to play a game. It wasn’t tiny or sleek and sexy, just a classic third generation iPod that did want I wanted and was adequately loud enough when I didn’t want to listen to the outside world. I shoved the ear buds into my ears and cranked up the volume to my post-grunge/rock.

For the first few songs I still felt maniacal and fuming inside, but then when a heart-broke love ballad that had no screaming or swearing came up, I finally found a piece of mind. My hands weren’t clammy anymore, my body stopped shaking long enough for me to notice. I closed my eyes. Music had always been a comfort, now a non-medicinal remedy to my pain.. All I felt was the music, all I saw was the music, I was the music. It was another world, another time and place, and I became another completely different person as a result. I started shaking again, but not of the same enraged emotions that I had previously felt, but of undetermined feeling, somewhat good, somewhat bad, but all mysterious. I was breathing heavily and shallowly, and the tears that hit my iPod screen nearly made me start hyperventilating. But then I became the music again, as a different song started, and I was alright. This song was just about some homecoming queen.

The album was nearly ending as I stayed in my musical seclusion, and relapsed into sleep. I still heard the music as I went out like a light at an undetermined part of the final song. I slept a dreamless sleep, the kind you never know you enjoy until you are so longing for it as your habitual and horrid day comes to a close. I woke up to silence, with the ear buds still in my ears. I scrolled through my playlists until I found my relaxation playlist, completely made up of classical music featuring artists like Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, and a few city orchestras, like the London and Boston Pops. I relaxed again to the six to eight minutes concertos, sonatas and symphonies. Then came Pavane- a Ravel composition as a dance for a dead Princess; slow, simple and fluid. If only we could’ve played it that well in Band, but the inadequate flutes who didn’t know how to play E-flat just had to get the melody. It’s not like I didn’t already know how to play it better than the ones who had the melody on my clarinet. I guess giving it to the flutes was better than giving it to our only and very mediocre French horn, but I digress. The song made me sleepy and I remember how crappy my reed was when we performed Pavane for a rating, and how my B-flats sounded raw and not as fluid as the song called for. It was the slow songs that were the hardest, and I was just happy we wouldn’t have to play that again.

My ill nerves subsided, and I slept once more to my favorite Mozart song of all, Rondo Alla Turka. When I woke once again I looked at my cell phone to see it was around seven, and I had homework to do. However, I smelled lasagna nearing the end of its culinary preparation in the oven, so homework could wait. After hooking up my almost dead iPod to its wall charger, I combed my hair, cracked my knuckles and set off for my well-timed lasagna. Maybe later I could submerge myself in Elton John.