by Megan Donnelly

Created on: July 27, 2007

As I sat in my car thinking of all the bad things that had been happening around me, feeling as though the world that I had built around me over all of my 20 short years was now facing an untimely Armageddon, I tried to think of a way out. I always considered myself strong, especially considering some of the emotional experiences I had been put through, but now, over the tiniest matter, I felt like I had finally snapped.

I didn't want to end my life, oh no, not at all, merely take a break. If I damaged myself just enough, I might be able to have some time away from it all, a relaxing holiday in a destination I so despised ... the hospital. I was that desperate to just get away. But unfortunately these things have a way of not working out how you intended and the overdose of sleeping pills or the excessive drinking of alcohol that you hoped would be just enough but ends up leaving you with an unwelcomed appointment with death and a permanently sealed coffin. Naturally, being 20, I never think that far ahead ... So I suppose I was lucky to have been blessed with ears and a brain so that I could listen and take in every word of the next song that hammered its sound out of my speakers.

It was a song by a band named "Fall Out Boy," the title of the song, "Hum Hallelujah". As cheery and blissful as the songs' title sounds, the song itself plays to it's own very unique beat. It is a song rumored to be about the bands bassists' attempt at suicide and the thoughts that raced through his head as he, like me, sat in his car and contemplated where his life was going. Though the song itself is misery in it's finest form, I found myself suddenly alert, hanging off every word, listening so hard my ears were buzzing from the volume I didn't know I had turned up. Suddenly, I wasn't alone. I wasn't a complete head case for feeling the way I did.

As I found comfort in the words of not only this song, but every song the band has ever produced, I found myself reflecting on all moments of my life when music had saved me.

Prone to anxiety attacks after I was forced to live with family who hated me, I found myself tossing and turning whilst most of the world was sleeping. Struggling to catch a single breath, head spinning, chest tightening the tears would start to slide down my cheeks as I thought about the early wake up I had in the morning and how I had, once again, not managed to shut my eyes long enough to fall into blissful darkness. It was then that I reached desperately for my

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