Introduction

It surprises people that I love rock music. I can understand people’s shock. I am a 5’1, young girl whose favorite color is pink and whose favorite artist is Taylor Swift. I do not exactly fit in with many stereotypes about rock fans. Maybe the couple sitting next to my dad and me during my first rock concert were thinking about those stereotypes when they saw us. I wonder if they thought that my dad was dragging his thirteen-year-old daughter from St. Louis to Columbia because he could not get a babysitter. Well, they were surprised when I did not sit down the entire concert and I was singing my little heart out to every single one of their songs. I hope that I did not ruin their date night too much.

This first rock concert was for a band named Nothing More. My dad introduced the band to me, and it was a bonding activity for us to listen to it when he would drive me to and from school or sports practices. My dad and I have gone to four Nothing More concerts together with our latest one being in Kansas City in May 2024. It is a special time for us. Accompanied by lyrics from Nothing More, my dad’s words of wisdom began to pop up in different ways throughout my life. From parenting to pain to politics, here is a non-comprehensive list of lessons I have learned from rock music.

“Maybe you should just fall / And leave the world and lose it all / And if that’s what you need / To finally see / I’ll be with you through it all”

The song “Jenny” is an appropriate place to start since it is the first song that I learned all the lyrics to in the Nothing More discography. Written about the lead singer’s sister struggling with her drug addiction, it is a hard song to listen to sometimes, especially for my dad. It was through this song that my dad opened up to me about our family’s history with addiction. I can still remember the pain in his eyes as he spoke about it. Suddenly, this song did not seem so far away. Knowing that the emotions of the lead singer and my dad were one and the same changed the way I understood this song. This song turned into a song about our family history and our family legacy. Handed down from parent to child, the family’s legacy given to my dad was one that he did not want to hand down to his children.

This song was one of my first lessons about what it means to create a family legacy. My parents have worked (and continue to work) so hard to make sure that they leave a legacy different than one of pain, hopelessness, and suffering at the hands of a substance. It is a legacy of joy, potential, and connection. They put in the hard labor of stopping the cycle of abuse and addiction, and for that, I will always be endlessly grateful to them. They have been there every time that I have needed them. When I forgot my trumpet at home during band days in middle school, my dad would always drop it off with a note inside telling me how much he loved me. When I needed clothing for my first job interview, my mother snuck out of work early to take me shopping. When my senior “Morning Madness” tradition was on a day that they were out of town, they changed the flight at the last minute to make sure that they could be there to celebrate me. They truly have been there with me through it all and knowing all of the hard work that they put in to be there makes me all the more thankful for parents like them.

“When all is gone, the only loss / Is to not have loved at every cost / When you can say, and I can say / We loved with every step we take”

I was once asked, “How do you keep your heart open when you have been hurt so many times by other people?”. To be honest, I do not know any other way to be. I do not know how to not love people in my life. I do not know how to close my heart off to those who want to earnestly love me and care for me. Learning how to keep my heart open to others was one of the hardest lessons I have learned. Some might say that it is silly. Why keep touching the oven once you have been burned? Sometimes the oven is hot. Sometimes people betray your trust or do not put in the work that it takes to maintain a relationship. Although, sometimes the oven holds a delicious dessert inside. If I had allowed myself to close myself off to friendship every time I was hurt, then I would have never met some of the most important friends in my life right now. I would rather burn myself over and over than lose out on the beautiful friendships I have and will continue to have for the rest of my life. I would rather love with my whole heart and risk getting burned than regret not loving people enough. I cannot close off my heart because it would not be honoring the lessons I have learned or the people who have welcomed me into their hearts and lives.

I want to talk about my friend Hope for a moment. I could write an entire post just about what Hope means to me, but I will keep it short (for now). When I first met her in our eighth-grade year, I had just experienced some really nasty friendship breakups. Hope and I were assigned to work on a group project together in science class, and it was here that the seeds of our friendship were planted. Our friendship took root after I joined the afterschool book club that Hope was a part of. Hope is now one of my closest and dearest friends. She has been there for me during my highest highs and my lowest lows. Our friendship has continued to blossom into our adult years. We still see each other between work shifts and classes. We text each other book recommendations and Sugarwitch ice cream ratings. Because I chose to keep my heart open, my life is so much more radiant because I have a friend in Hope. I cannot image my life or the person I would be without Hope. Like her name, she gave me hope in friendship once again.

“If it doesn’t hurt at all / Then it doesn’t mean a thing”

Every time that I was nervous about something in life, whether it was a school presentation or a job interview, my dad always said, “Good. That means that you give a shit”. Nerves sometimes go hand in hand with pain. We are nervous about doing something because it might bring us pain (either physical or emotional). When we experience pain, we assume that it is always going to be a negative thing. We associate pain with negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, and detachment. However, like these emotions, pain is not always a bad thing. When you go for a run, your lungs can burn and your legs can cramp, but that does not mean that it is not good for your body or your mind in the long run. Pain shows me that I care about something, and sadness also works in the same way. Sadness is something that I have been working to fix my relationship with me in the past couple of years. Ever since my high school graduation, I have realized that happiness and gratitude can come from sadness. I am sad to say goodbye to friends from high school although I am so happy for our memories and so thankful that I had the time that I did with them.

The opposite of love is not hatred, but ambivalence. If you did not care, then you would not feel anything. That is why it hurts so much when a friend turns away from you. I had a close friend in high school who stopped talking to me after graduation. It was so hard for me because I cared for her so deeply. She had helped me overcome some huge challenges during my sophomore year, and I hoped that we would stay in contact after high school. It hurt so deeply when she did not respond to my text messages. I hated the pain that came from this experience although with some time, I realized that the pain was a good thing. It showed me how much our friendship meant to me over the years. It showed me that I can deeply love another person so much that saying goodbye and letting go are two of the hardest things to do. It showed me that love does not leave just because that person is no longer in my life. This pain is still present. I think about her every summer. It even still hurts writing it down two years later. Although I would not trade that pain in the world, because if it did not hurt to lose her, then it meant that I never cared for her at all. I would not trade those three years together for anything. This experience has taught me the importance of holding onto friends that show you that the possible pain is worth it. It has also taught me the importance of letting people go and finding peace for myself. While I can celebrate our friendship and understand the pain, it does not mean that I deserve to be in that pain.

“Everybody wants to change the world / But one thing’s clear / No one ever wants to change themselves”

Through my work with now three charity organizations, I see all the work that needs to be done to create a better world for those I love. I have lived in St. Louis my whole life, and I have seen the difficulties that this city has faced in the past twenty years. I understand that the place I call home is not perfect. It is inspiring to hear other WashU students talk about all the changes they want to see in St. Louis. I love that students engage with the St. Louis community and feel a call to create positive change for their new home. This is the same call that many other St. Louisans (like myself) feel. Although, something that has struck me while talking with many out-of-state students is that there is a lack of connection to St. Louis. They stay in that “WashU Bubble”. They whisper to each other about how dangerous Ferguson is like it is some dark secret that St. Louis keeps from the rest of the world. I am told that St. Charles County (where I am from in St. Louis) is not worth visiting. I have been asked, “Why did you stay here for college? You are going to move after graduation, right?” more times than I can count. Someone told me that she was in St. Louis to complete her “Midwestern Experience”. Not many people care to see St. Louis the way that natives see St. Louis.

The call that many out-of-state students experience is so different from the call that I experience as a native. While there are lots of reasons for it, one of them is that they have not allowed themselves to be changed by St. Louis. Much like a dance, it takes two to create change. Growing up here, it was impossible for St. Louis to not shape me as a person. It has made me more attentive to social issues, more enthusiastic to volunteer, and more invested in learning about both the good and bad parts of St. Louis history. Most importantly, it has made me passionate about my hometown. Almost all St. Louisans share this. I had the opportunity to experience this while I was rushing potential new members for my sorority. When I was talking with my future Little (the girl I am mentoring in the sorority), I asked her what she was passionate about and she said, “St. Louis because I grew up here”. It was an instant connection, and I knew right then and there that she was going to be my Little. We want to share this passion with everyone who calls St. Louis home, even if it will only be for four years. I will always welcome out-of-state students to help change St. Louis for the better, but I encourage all of them to allow St. Louis to change them. It is hard to make a change in a place that does not change you.

“I build my house on sand / Hoping it would stand / The storms that come my way / And now I’m left to face / The weight of my mistakes / And a chance to start again”

My first day of eighth grade at my new middle school (and what would eventually become my high school) was one of much anxiety. I was struggling with the idea that I would be “the new kid.” While I was stressed about moving schools, I understood that it was the best decision I could have made. I was very unhappy at my old elementary/middle school. I knew I had been unhappy for a long time, but still struggled with letting go. Now, I realize that I was not struggling to let go of the school itself. I realized that I was struggling to let go of the predictability of the school. Humans are born to crave predictability even negative predictability. If I stayed at my old school, I knew that I would wake up anxious to go to school. I knew that I would face the same problems again and again without support from teachers or administrative staff. I knew that I would go home miserable at the end of the day. I was stuck in this cycle of predictability, and I was scared to break it. I don’t give myself enough credit for being brave enough to tell my parents about my unhappiness. We do not realize how much vulnerability it takes to admit that we are unhappy, especially to the people who love us the most. I am thankful every day that they took me seriously and acted quickly to get me into another school. They were unbelievably supportive. My parents encouraged me to make the choice about where I would go for the rest of middle school and (hopefully) of high school. They gave me the agency to break the cycle, and I embraced it.

Flashing forward to now, I can say that choosing to break away from that school was one of the best decisions I have made in my whole life. I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. I could have been scared that I was going to experience the same predictability at my new school, but I allowed myself the chance to start again. Just because I made mistakes at my old school did not mean that I had to make the same mistakes again. Just because my old school did not support me did not mean that my new school would do the same time. Change is scary, but it is also one of the only things that is constant in our lives. This means that we have to embrace change. If we never face the things that are holding us back from change, we will never grow and develop as people. There is always a chance to start again; we just have to be brave enough to take it.

“So, here’s to the heartache / Here’s to the mistakes / We’ll drink to all the years, the tears / That lead to this place”

This is the Nothing More song that I come back to the most. It is the song that encompasses everything that I have lived through. Life is not without hardship. It would be naive to say that life is not without pain. It is hard to believe that everything in life happens for a reason, but I truly do believe it, and believing that is a choice that I make every single day. If we fail to put meaning behind our pain, then that pain will consume us. It becomes the only thing that we can focus on. We become blinded by this pain. Sometimes, it takes all of our energy to turn this pain into something else. It is a process that takes time and effort. Through years of hard work, I have trained myself to see the benefits of pain. Pain and mistakes can work together to create a nasty (and addicting) cocktail which makes the challenge of embracing it even harder. Mistakes can also debilitate a person if they cannot find something positive about it. It is easy to detach ourselves from our pain and mistakes. We can believe that our pain and our mistakes are not a part of us. We can push it to the back of our minds and avoid it. Although, I think that these two things are a part of us and a part of our life stories. Pain and mistakes should be something that we celebrate because they are a part of who we are. Our pain and mistakes have created the people we are right now and the life we have right now. I am grateful for all my pain and mistakes because I like the person I am right now.

This is also the song that I always ask my dad to play when we are driving to our next Nothing More concert. I think that my dad and I see this song in the same way. It is a way for us to reflect on our past concerts and all the time with each other that we have gained from these concerts. When I am homesick at college, I can always turn on “Here’s to the Heartache” and remember all of our special father-daughter time on the road to our next Nothing More concert. It is a reminder of all the ways that my life is different because of this band. I am looking forward to our next trip to Columbia in August 2024 for our fifth time seeing them in concert. Nothing More is performing in the very same venue that we first saw them in. It will be very full circle for my dad and me. I wonder if another couple will sit down next to us when we go, and I wonder if they will be able to see all these lessons in me. I hope that they do.

Bibliography and Author’s Note

Lessons I Have Learned from Rock Music Playlist (Spotify)

Nothing More Kansas City 2024 Set List

The photo attached to this blog is of me at my fifth Nothing More concert!