Music has always been the place where my feelings go first. Long before I had the language to describe my childhood, long before I understood the shape of the gaslighting I grew up with, long before I could name what hurt, songs were doing that work for me. They held truths I couldn’t see, and emotions I wasn’t allowed to express.

I didn’t know it at the time. That’s how powerful the distortion was.

But looking back now, I can see how music became my emotional scaffolding, the structure that held me upright while the rest of my world was teaching me to fold in on myself. And I can see how the goth subculture became the first place where I was allowed to exist without being corrected.

Childhood gaslighting and the stories we’re told about ourselves

When I look back at my childhood now, I can see how the stories I was told about myself shaped the way I understood who I was. At the time, I didn’t have the language for it. I didn’t know what gaslighting was. I didn’t know that affection could be conditional, or that praise could be withheld as a form of control. I didn’t know that being told “they don’t know the real you” after a good school report was a way of erasing my achievements rather than protecting me.

I just knew that my needs were treated as inconveniences. New school shoes were a problem. Doing well at school was suspicious. Success was ignored. And affection came with caveats — if I just fixed this one thing about myself (my teenage acne, my teeth, my psoriasis), then I would be loveable. As though that were something I had to earn.

When you grow up with that kind of emotional distortion, you learn to distrust your own perception. You learn to shrink yourself. You learn to perform the version of you that causes the least friction. And you learn, without ever being told directly, that your value is something other people decide.

It’s only in adulthood that you start to recognise the architecture of it. All the ways those messages quietly shaped your identity, all the ways they taught you to doubt your own feelings, all the ways they made you blind to your own trauma. You don’t realise you’ve been carrying someone else’s narrative until you finally put it down.

Music was the first place where I could hear a different story.

The First Time Someone Saw What I Couldn’t

I was seventeen when someone outside my family saw something I couldn’t. He played “Family Life” by New Model Army and said, “This reminds me of you”. I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t see anything clearly then because that’s how powerful the gaslighting was.

But he wasn’t inside the system. He didn’t have the blinders I’d been taught to wear. He heard something in that song that resonated with the way I carried myself, the way I spoke, the way I avoided certain topics without knowing I was avoiding them. The patterns in the way I was treated in the family system.

He was just a kid, we both were, but he recognised a truth I wasn’t ready to face. And the song held that truth quietly, patiently, until I was.

Years later, when I finally understood what he’d seen, I realised that music had been doing this all along: naming things I couldn’t name, holding feelings I wasn’t allowed to express, giving shape to experiences I didn’t yet have the emotional vocabulary for.

Music became the emotional support structure that supported the parts of me that were trying to grow despite everything.

Before Subculture: Music as the First Safe Place

Even before I ever found the goth subculture, before eyeliner and glitter and charityshop chic, music was already the place where I went to feel safe. My dad used to tape songs for me, the kind of AOR tracks people might roll their eyes at now, but at the time they meant everything. I listened to them alone in my room, partly because I was hiding from the family I wasn’t welcome in and partly because they reminded me that at least one of my parents could love me.

Those songs were uncomplicated. Warm. Steady. Kind.

They didn’t demand anything from me. They didn’t correct me. They didn’t tell me I was wrong. They didn’t treat my needs as burdens.

They were simply there, and they sounded like affection.

My mother would later use that music against me, another way to turn something safe into something shameful, another way to distort the story of who I was allowed to be. But even then, the songs themselves stayed intact. They held a truth she couldn’t touch: that I had been loved, even if imperfectly, and that I was capable of feeling love in return.

That early musical refuge became the foundation for everything that came later. It was the first piece of emotional scaffolding I ever had.

Subculture as Refuge

Slough in the 90s didn’t have a huge alternative scene, so anyone who wasn’t “normal” gravitated together: goths, metalheads, glammies, punks, the odd industrial kid. We drank in the same pub, wore whatever we could find in charity shops, DIY or buy from Camden, Carnaby Street and Kensington Market, and built our identities out of eyeliner, glitter and second-hand velvet.

For me, that wasn’t just fashion. It was the first place where I wasn’t treated as a problem. It was the first place where my needs weren’t an inconvenience. It was the first place where I could be quiet or loud, strange or glittery, melancholy or joyful, and nobody tried to correct me.

My mother hated it. Of course she did. Subculture gave me mirrors, language and community, all the things that threaten a system built on distortion.

But I loved it. I still do. It was the first home I chose for myself.

Music as Emotional Language

Long before I had the words for what I was feeling, music gave me a way to express it. I didn’t always understand why certain songs resonated so strongly, or why particular lyrics felt like they were speaking directly to something inside me. I just knew that music made sense when nothing else did.

It became a kind of emotional shorthand. A way of saying “this is how it feels” without having to explain anything. A way of recognising myself in sound when I couldn’t recognise myself in the stories I’d been told.

Some songs helped me process grief. Some helped me feel anger safely. Some helped me understand loneliness. Some helped me feel joy without apology. Some helped me reclaim memories that had been tied to fear.

When my mother died, I found myself listening to *Unforgiven* by Metallica. I connected with this song because it reminded me of what it was like to be the ‘problem’. I also found myself reflecting on the song *Happy House* by Siouxsie and the Banshees; it was exactly what my family home life was like. ‘Safe and warm as long as you play along’. That line  felt like someone had finally said the quiet part out loud.

Music didn’t fix anything. But it helped me feel things I’d spent years being taught to suppress. It helped me understand myself in ways I couldn’t have articulated at the time. It helped me build emotional scaffolding where none had existed.

And it helped me find my people.

Reclaiming songs tied to trauma

There are songs that come with difficult memories attached, songs that were present during frightening moments, or tied to people who caused harm. For a long time, I didn’t understand how those songs could shift, how they could lose their sting and become something else entirely.

But they can. And they do.

The first time I heard Love Bomb Baby, it was played at me by someone who would later try to harm me. For years, that song carried the echo of that moment, the volatility, the fear, the chaos. But over time, something changed. The song didn’t stay tied to him. It became tied to me.

It became silly. It became glittery. It became fun. It became mine.

Reclaiming a song doesn’t erase the past. It rewrites the emotional meaning. It takes something that once felt dangerous and makes it safe. It turns shrapnel into glitter. Reclaiming that song wasn’t about pretending the past didn’t happen; it was about choosing what the song meant to me now.

That’s the power of music, not just to express emotion, but to transform it.

Adult Identity Reconstruction

Adulthood gives you the chance to rebuild the parts of yourself that were shaped by distortion. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens slowly, quietly, through moments of recognition and moments of choice.

You start to see the old messages for what they were. You start to understand that your needs were never the problem. You start to recognise that your achievements were real. You start to realise that affection shouldn’t come with conditions. You start to speak to your younger self gently, instead of judging her.

You begin to build identity from your own values, not the ones you were handed.

For me, that meant returning to the subculture that had always felt like home. It meant dancing again. It meant clubbing. It meant live shows that feel like ritual. It meant wearing what I want, not what I’m told. It meant protecting the community that protected me.

It meant choosing the people who see me clearly. It meant choosing the life that feels like mine. It meant choosing the music that holds me together.

Identity reconstruction isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about becoming someone true.

Music as Home

This is why I still dance. This is why I still club. This is why I still love live performances. This is why I still protect my subculture. This is why I still reach for music when I need to understand myself.

Music has been my emotional scaffolding, my mirror, my refuge, my reclamation, and my home. It has held truths I wasn’t ready to see, given me language I didn’t have, and helped me build a life that feels like mine.

And I think that’s worth writing about. Music didn’t just accompany my life; it helped me build it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this reflection. If you’re beginning to recognise your own emotional scaffolding, or noticing the narratives you were handed, I’m here. You’re welcome to contact me if you’d like support in exploring your own story.

You can also find more of my writing, which includes music-based reflections, as well as previous blog posts on my Substack, linked below
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