Day #183 in A Year of Thanks:
I’m thankful for the song “Dream On” by Dream Street.

I have two thoughts competing for my attention for today’s post of thanks. Therefore, I’m dividing them into a two-part series spanning two days because these two thoughts are related to one another, yet discussing their significance to me will be lengthy. I had a pretty eclectic taste in music when I was a teenager, ranging from the Beatles to Iron Maiden, though the two bands I listened to the most were Dream Street and Simple Plan. Both bands had a particular song that was constantly battling for my heart’s attention. For Simple Plan, “Welcome to My Life” was the song, and for Dream Street, it was “Dream On” (below).

While “Dream On” captured my heart first, “Welcome to My Life” came out during the darkest time of my teenage years. I used to watch a lot of MTV in the morning before catching the bus to school, and one day, just as I was about to turn off the TV and walk out the door, MTV started playing Welcome to My Life. If memory serves me right, I was almost late for the bus that morning, but teenage me would have been ecstatic to miss it, because my heart and soul clung onto every single word of this song. It was everything I was screaming deep down inside as I walked the halls of school every day. To say I hated school would be a lie, but to say I loved it would also be a lie.

I’m not going to sit here and start naming names and share how people have hurt me, but I’m also not going to say this song wasn’t everything I felt with a magnified intensity of 1,000 times, because it was. At home, I felt invisible and unworthy, and at school, I felt like no one saw anything in me but my hearing disability. The only people who’d let me sit at their table at lunch were people I felt had pitied me. I’d make sure I could get lunch (and study hall) privileges in the school library every chance I could. That was my safe space, the only place in the entire world where I felt like I could let my guard down, as it made me feel like I didn’t have to do anything but just be me, without the pressures of being a teenager with a hearing disability, with no judgment whatsoever.

On top of all that, I was internally struggling with the aftermath of a traumatic experience that I’d only begun revealing a few years ago to Grams, my pastor, my dads, and those closest to me. It’s dark and really affected my self-esteem worse than it was before, and being that I was fifteen, I was terrified of how to handle it. I didn’t want to add to the burdens my family was already dealing with, and I didn’t want what I went through to be blasted all over school. So, yes, I kept everything to myself, and I was bleeding inside, screaming. Welcome to My Life was the song my heart and soul needed to express itself. No one was listening, though. No one was paying attention or seemed to care enough to see me and check in with me.

Dream On was like a homing beacon, pulling me back from the darkness whenever possible. It felt like the only beacon of light coming from a lighthouse off in the distance during what felt like the craziest storm of my life, where I felt like I was lost at sea, drifting so far from my intended course, where I felt like I was drowning and wanting to give up, because I was so tired of trying to stay afloat. I listened to this song over and over again, on repeat, for countless hours, for many nights back to back. I’d allow myself to feel all my emotions as they were when listening to this song, even cry myself silently to sleep at times. However, my heart and spirit needed this song because it grounded me with strength while giving me hope for better days and seasons to come. It’s still one of my favorite songs, and I’m a die-hard loyalist to every single sweetheart of Dream Street. Darkness has fallen and lost. Dream On won with the hope and light it gave.

Day 182 | Day 183 | Day 184
Year of Thanks