When I was four years old, I moved for the first time.
My mom and I went from living in a house with my grandmother to living in a small apartment on our own. My father was an entity, an absent figure who existed almost like a myth. His abandonment was difficult to understand because, at the same time, he never completely disappeared.
When I was six, my mom started a relationship with her boss at the time, a married man with a wife and children of his own, who began offering her the illusion of stability. I think my mom also longed to give me a father figure (something she never truly achieved), and as the years went by, he slowly became a bigger part of our lives.
I think one of the few positive things my mom and her partner left me was music.
That, and books, have always been my escape. But music was the one constant.
It was there when we cleaned the house on weekends, during car rides to school, and later blasting through my headphones when I got my first personal CD player.
My mom introduced me to a lot of popular music from my country, but also to a lot of English-speaking artists. The Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, The Doors. All the greats.
Her partner loved that music too. It was something they shared. But because he already had children in their twenties or thirties while I was still a kid, he was also familiar with different artists and genres.
From Eminem and Beastie Boys to Coldplay and Oasis.
One day, for reasons I can't remember, he picked me up from elementary school. We stopped at Carl's Jr. on the way home, and while we waited for our order, he put on a CD I didn't recognize.
"I know you're going to love this," he said.
Then he turned up the volume and introduced me to Definitely Maybe by Oasis.
I kept skipping through the songs because I wanted to hear a little bit of all of them before we got home. When we arrived, he put the CD back in its case and handed it to me, along with a Coldplay album and Imagine by John Lennon.
To this day, I think they remain some of the most unexpected gifts I've ever received—and some of the most influential. I still remember lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, moving my feet to the rhythm of Oasis playing through my headphones.
My English wasn't very good back then, but I listened to those songs over and over until I had memorized them. Understanding them came later.
And when it finally did, along with so much other music, I think my life changed forever.
There have been many moments when I've felt alone, but the truth is that music has always been there.
Oasis—and later Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds when Oasis split up—were there during some of the most beautiful and devastating moments of my life.
The death of my grandfather.
My separation from my mother.
Being kicked out of my home.
Teenage loves—and not-so-teenage loves—that made me fall in love and broke my heart.
The suicide of one of my best friends and my father's suicide in the same month.
Sleepless nights at the beach with friends.
House parties fueled by cheap beer and questionable weed.
Meeting the man who would become my husband.
Quitting that job to build my own company.
Deciding to have a child in the middle of a pandemic.
Waiting for another baby.
If I made a list of all the people who have been there for me and changed my life in some way, one of them would undoubtedly have to be Noel Gallagher.
Because in the end, this isn't really about music.
It's about a nine-year-old girl lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the same album over and over again.
It's about finding company when you feel alone, about surviving losses that felt impossible to survive.
About celebrating love, friendship, births, and new beginnings, about reaching thirty-one years old and realizing that some songs have been with you longer than many people have.
Thank you for the music that has accompanied me through most of my life.
Thank you for helping me put words to feelings I often didn't know how to name.
And thank you for being there, even without knowing it.
