Ask Sarah for her Top 5: Laurel in College stories, and she’s bound to entertain you for a few hours if she can actually tell a complete story through her giggles and my protesting. One story that inevitably will come up must have happened sometime during the spring semester of our freshman year. We had been placed randomly as roommates in Reilly and were still building our friendship and ‘learning’ each others quirks. Not the easiest thing to do as two drastically different young women.

So I’m 4 pages into a 15 page Biology Lab Report when Sarah asks sweetly if I would mind changing the song. Changing the song?!?! Huh? What? Why? My brain was obsessing with bacterial colony count and not truly focusing on what was being broadcast from my computer’s speakers. I guess what I didn’t realize in that moment initially was Sarah in all of her warmth and kindness was silently pleading for me to change the song, not because she didn’t like that particular song but because throughout the 11 hour course of a day I had only listened to one song… Hopeless by Train. I’m sure somewhere within my brain I knew it was the same song over and over and over again. The constant beat and lyrics was allowing my brain to sort through information and drown out everything but the task at hand. I should have known in this moment that Sarah and I would be best friends forever. She was patient enough to deal with the same song on repeat for hours as she came and went during her day. She could survive my obsessive quirk and need for control and still with care ask if I minded changing the song. Sarah could put up with me being me. I don’t even remember if I changed the song, was miffed at her, or ignored her request. When she tells that story, she never really gets to the end. We’re too busy laughing, reminiscing, and allowing our friendship to flow into another amazing memory of who we are and where we’ve been.

I still obsessively listen to the same song, playlist and cd for hours/days. I now have a new roommate, Keri, who gets to deal with hearing the same song filtering from my room into her world. Keri jokes that after living with me for almost 3.5 years that she finds herself humming songs that she doesn’t know or recognize while at work and then gets home to hear those same songs coming from my bedroom. My dad moans about a song I listened to one Christmas vacation on repeat but to this day he can still positively recognize and enjoy the song. But Sarah was the first time that I actively was aware of what I was doing. The first time I pondered the comfort I found in music. There was nothing significant about Train’s Hopeless except that it spoke to me. To this day, I still find myself turning to that simple song in need of comfort. If you haven’t realized it yet, music to me is an old friend. A lifelong companion who doesn’t speak back, doesn’t force their view down your throat or give you advice when all you want is a hug of reassurance or word of encouragement. No, music is a warm embrace of unspeakable words when you’re speechless on a cold night. It’s the friend that never sleeps and never considers you too high maintenance. Instead it never judges, never questions, only comforts… a lot like Sarah.