God’s greatest creation – a vessel through which I have been a fugitive from the horror of human interaction. They are irreplaceable and incomparable… heaven personified – EARPHONES.

The year was 2011 and my cousin had just bought me my first cell phone – a then popular black Samsung E250. I know many new generation teens/tweens would gasp at the idea of getting a phone “that late” in my teenage years. But fortunately or unfortunately, back then, technology was not that big a god.

Giddy with excitement, I rummaged through the package and cautiously scattered my phone and black earphones on the bed. I could not have fathomed how soul-deep my connection to these wiry cables would strengthen over the years. Why do I find it absolutely necessary to pay homage to what our mothers consider ear battering?

Well, the answer lies in the moments I have had to escape to a melodious alternate-reality in order to survive whatever whirlwind of emotion I was feeling at the time. One such instance was the morning of November 15th, 2015, exactly four days since my seventeenth birthday. The birds were chirping, the sun shone brighter – like butter on my skin – and I was in love. Or at least, my version of love at that naïve, none the wiser age.

I woke up, typed a sweet long message proclaiming my love for my then boyfriend and pressed send. I then proceeded to prepare myself for school and I was on my merry way. My return was met with a cloud of disappointment at the realisation that my beloved boyfriend had not bothered to reply to my message. And he was active on Facebook. The cheek!

Of course, it was not long after that I received the infamous “It’s not you, it’s me” break up text. Indeed, love is blind. For weeks and weeks on end, my lip was glued to the floor and I was a heartbroken mess. It was in moments like these that I drowned out unnecessary interaction and numbed the stabbing pain in my chest by letting the music serenade me.

It is like a blanket. Warms the cold that creeps into your soul through years of exposure to the good and the bad that lives in every single one of us. There is refuge for each and every one of us who take the ebbs and flows of life with a strong current of our own.