I could never explain it to them, though they repeatedly asked and questioned me. I was in a state of confusion, pain, and shock. How could I even begin to describe how I felt?

I felt the hot tears pouring down my checks in two streams, blurring my vision and revealing me as the fraud that I was; pretending to be happy and exuberant, when in truth: I wanted to die. My life has been a series of ups and downs, yes and no. All I have to show for anything good that has come out of it, all that I ever had, were my friends. My two best friends, yet, there they were. Smiling and laughing, in their own circle, leaving me alone to rot away from my core.
I don’t know when it started. Perhaps when the blood began to make patterns on my arm, perhaps when I looked in the mirror and saw the ugliest creature staring back, perhaps when I got my heart broken for the first time; but I became more dependent on that friendship. I needed it to be there, to feel that it was real. Yet, it seemed more fictitious every damn day. And so I stood there, watching as my friends, the two that I needed, that I depended on yet again denied me entrance into their world, their circle. Something good had actually happened that day. Yet, only one cared. My family was being detrimentally and dangerously hit, yet no one cared. I talked myself away from the ledge, yet no one noticed. And I felt so alone. So I lost myself.
The music is what saved me. The drums, the piano, the bass, the guitar, the voice. I heard the lyrics and let the story envelop me. And I found that my story was being told; being lifted up and mixed with thousands of others. And I, for once, didn’t feel so alone. And I was at home, and at peace. I felt whole.
Adele, she saved me, with her words. They inspired. I wrote, I sang, I cried. I could still hear the whispered terrors of my past, but then I simply tuned them out as my finger raised the volume. I found myself “daring” someone to “let me be” their “one and only.” Or screaming that I’d “find someone” like them. Perhaps even questioning “Didn’t I give it all?”
But then, the song stops. The music goes away. And my haven is gone. And I’m alone again.

And I stand there, my tears streaming down my face, the faces staring at me with shock and mortification at my unbecomingly display. Shaking, I utter the words that seem so strange, but are like a drug to me. The hit and addiction to them force them out of my mouth. I say “it’s time to say goodbye to turning tables,” and the tears come harder, faster. And then all goes black, but the music resonates. And I find a haven. I find home. I find me.