jrowe

Because the original version was nearly 6 minutes long, I submitted a shortened version of my original song “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” The Monthly Prompt asked us to create a song either about mental health or our experience with mental health, and I chose the latter. Music has always been an outlet for me to speak on things that have hurt me or that continue to hurt me. This song specifically is about my religious trauma, and how I felt growing up in an extremely hostile environment as a queer person. Growing up being taught to believe that my feelings as a queer person were evil made accepting myself and being comfortable in my skin an impossible task, even now I struggle to unlearn that toxic belief system. I made this song as to let these loud, angry emotions out, allowing the anger, the sadness, and the desperation build into a wall of sound that encapsulated my feelings perfectly. In the lyrics, I speak on both the inconsistencies of my religions beliefs and my belief that love cannot be demonized no matter who it is shared by. At the end of the song I take responsibility for the pain I am feeling and am choosing to instead focus on healing than to point the blame at an entity and restart the cycle of hate that has gone on for longer than I have lived. I choose to believe that if there is a God, it is not as unkind as we all think it is. Simply, in this song, I wanted to bring awareness to the homophobic and transphobic rhetoric all over the country, and ask others, including myself, to not turn our hate into anger but instead heal.

I wrote the song ‘the hard truth’ during a period of my life when I felt as if I had lost everything and that led me to consider what exactly was wrong with me because I felt as if I couldn’t hold on to anything. As I began to reflect on my life and experiences, I realized that I do have flaws and I am insecure but that does not make me any less worthy of chasing my dreams and holding on to the possibility of being able to live the life I want to ten years down the line. For me, my ideal life is to spend it making music and touring, being one of the biggest artists of my time. Being a part of the music industry can be defeating because of how little hope there might seem. Nonetheless, I wrote this song to prove to myself that I have what it takes to turn my dreams into a reality while also accepting that I am flawed but still working towards being better so I can do better.