We lived in two story townhouse, with faded blue paint. It got hot in the summer, to the point where I would lay on the carpet floor of my room and sweat, eyes closed.

I could watch the light move through my eyelids, making them peach colored petals in the sweltering heat.

I was ten years old, the oldest of three, lost inside my head full of stories and ideas, nightmares and dreams.

My house was filled with screaming, crying, a mother who slept a lot and returned from work with brows furrowed and a hate for summer.

My father tried, and failed and got tired of trying.

I lived in the wariness of not knowing when I would be presented with a problem too big for me to solve. So far, I had managed to solve all the ones presented to me thus far, somehow.

I worried about the day when I couldn’t.

I found the CD in a stack of others. Mariah Carey, U2, Eric Clapton, Switchfoot.

I was upset about something, although what I’m unsure. There were plenty of upsetting things in my life at that point.

I put the CD in, I listened to Chester scream. I mouthed the words I read off the cd booklet and tried to keep up with Mike’s rhythmic snarling poetry.

I recognized something in their sound, in the rapid electric beats, the screaming of the guitar and the throbbing of the bass. I felt the drums draw my heart into their beat.

I listened to Hybrid Theory until I knew the lyrics better than I knew my multiplication tables. I listened to it until I could snap out words at the same speed as Mike, until I could scream as long and loud as Chester.

I lay on the ground in my room watching the light through my eyelids, listening to my parents fight wondering what I would do if things got ugly to keep my brother’s distracted…. And when they did get bad, I put Hybrid Theory on as loud as I could, I locked my bedroom door with my brothers on either side of me and focused on their lyrics while I tried to keep them from listening to the shouts downstairs.

I figured out one of those times why my parents did what they did.
It didn’t change the fact I hated it, or that I was hurting or that it was damaging but I understood a little better.

You like to think you’re never wrong
You like to act like you’re someone
You want someone to hurt like you
You wanna share what you’ve been through
(You live what you’ve learned)

I was going to learn something different. I was going to live different. I was determined.
I became a Linkin Park fan at age ten.