Others say it’s quality time, physical touch, acts of service, or gifts.

Mine has always been music.

Not because I love listening to songs.

But because music has always known me better than words ever could.

I’ve never been particularly good at explaining how I feel.

I overthink my sentences.

I hesitate.

I convince myself that whatever I want to say will never come out the way I mean it.

So I stay quiet.

Music has always spoken for me.

Every song I save carries a memory.

Every lyric I replay holds a feeling I couldn’t put into words.

Some people keep journals.

I keep playlists.

Music is the one place where I’m happily lost in my own thoughts.

The one place where my imagination is free to wander without judgment.

A three-minute song can become an entire lifetime in my head.

I create conversations that never happened.

I replay moments that are long gone.

I imagine futures that may never exist.

For the length of a song, every impossible thing becomes possible.

And somehow…

I’m okay living there.

Every song means something.

There are songs that remind me of my childhood.

Songs that remind me of home before I packed my life into suitcases and moved across an ocean.

Songs that remind me of people I’ve loved.

Songs that remind me of people I’ve lost.

Songs that make me cry before the first verse is even over.

There are songs that remind me of the first girl I ever called my best friend.

She wasn’t just my friend.

She felt like the sister I had chosen for myself.

Life happened.

We don’t speak anymore.

But every now and then, a song finds her before I do.

Music has a strange way of preserving people long after they’ve left your life.

That’s why I don’t believe playlists are just playlists.

They’re time capsules.

They’re memory boxes.

They’re pieces of our souls disguised as melodies.

Maybe that’s why I’m so protective of mine.

People often wonder why I rarely share my music.

The truth is…

I’m not hiding songs.

I’m protecting the parts of me that live inside them.

Because when I hand someone my playlist, I’m not saying,

“Here are my favorite songs.”

I’m saying,

“Here are the memories that shaped me.”

“Here are the people I’ve loved.”

“Here are the versions of myself I’ve never stopped carrying.”

“This is how my heart sounds when no one else is listening.”

Sharing my playlist is me handing you my heart in the softest form I’ll ever know how.

I’m not good with words.

I’m not good at explaining myself.

Sometimes I don’t even understand my own emotions until I hear someone else sing them.

So when I send you a song…

Please understand that I’m trusting you with something I don’t casually give away.

Every lyric.

Every chorus.

Every bridge.

Every silence between the verses.

They’re all saying the things I couldn’t.

Don’t just hear the melody.

Listen to the words.

Because somewhere in those lyrics…

I’m trying to tell you who I am.

I remember talking to someone who loved music the way I did.

Not just the melodies.

The lyrics.

He would send me songs and say,

“This reminded me of you.”

For the first time, I met someone who listened to music the same way I did.

Someone who understood that songs are conversations.

That lyrics can say things people never manage to.

I think that’s one of the reasons I liked him so much.

He understood a language I’d been speaking my entire life.

Then there was someone else.

The first person I ever trusted enough to share my playlist with.

He listened.

Then he looked at me and asked,

“Why can’t you be this soft with me?”

He didn’t realize…

Sharing those songs was my softness.

That playlist wasn’t a random collection of music.

It was my vulnerability.

My trust.

My heart.

I don’t think he understood what I’d placed in his hands.

Maybe that’s why I’ve become so careful.

Because to me, music has never been background noise.

It’s where I keep the pieces of myself that words have always failed to carry.

And maybe that’s why I secretly dream of someone creating a playlist for me.

Not because every song has to be romantic.

But because somewhere in the lyrics they thought,

“This sounds like her.”

“This is how I see her.”

“This reminds me of Victoria.”

I think that would be one of the purest forms of love.

To know someone so deeply that even songs begin to resemble them.

Some people write love letters.

Some people buy flowers.

Some people say,

“I love you.”

But I think one of the greatest acts of love is quietly saying,

“I heard this song… and I immediately thought of you.”

Because that tells me you were paying attention.

You listened.

You noticed.

You remembered.

And in a world where everyone is trying to be heard…

Being deeply understood is one of the rarest gifts we can ever receive.

Some people say, “ I love you”.

I send songs.

Because everyone I have ever loved has found a home in a lyric.

And if I ever love you…

There will always be a lyric that reminds me of you.

I’m so used to being by myself that when someone claims to love me, it almost feels like a lie.

Commitment terrifies me.

The idea of spending the rest of my life with one person—till death do us part—haunts me more than it comforts me.

Whenever I’m in a talking stage and conversations drift toward courtship, marriage, or forever, something in me becomes defensive.

When children are mentioned, I shut the conversation down completely.

It’s not because I dislike children. I don’t.

It’s because I’ve seen what happens when a woman marries the wrong person.

If you can’t keep your word or show me consistency now, what makes me believe you’ll suddenly become that man when I’m your wife? When I’m carrying your child? When I’m at my most vulnerable?

Love isn’t what scares me.

It’s trusting the wrong person with the parts of me I can never get back.

Yet another person has walked away after promising they would stay.

It made me realize something about myself: I don’t hear promises the way most people do.

I think it started years ago when I watched Jodha Akbar. There’s a scene that stayed with me long after the movie ended. In that world, a promise wasn’t just words—it carried the weight of honor, and breaking one could cost a life. Ever since then, I’ve struggled to see promises as casual.

The Bible reinforced that belief for me. One verse that has always stayed with me is that God honors His word. When God makes a promise, He keeps it. His promises are never empty, never convenient, never made just to comfort someone in the moment.

Maybe that’s why I rarely promise anything I can’t guarantee. If I’m not sure I can do it, I won’t say I will. To me, a promise isn’t just a sentence—it’s a debt. Once you’ve spoken those words, you owe someone your sincerity.

People have asked me why I seem so hard-hearted or guarded. The truth is, I’m not hard-hearted. I’m just tired of words that were never meant to become actions.

I’ve met people who spoke beautifully about staying, about consistency, about being different. Their words sounded reassuring in the moment, but eventually the actions told a different story.

So I stopped taking promises at face value.

Not because I don’t believe people can be genuine, but because I’ve learned that words are easy. Commitment is harder.

These days, I don’t judge people by what they promise me. I pay attention to what they repeatedly choose to do.

Because a promise, to me, has never been just a promise.

It’s a debt.

Maybe that’s where I begin.

Not with figuring everything out. Not with becoming someone new. But with remembering who I was before life taught me that surviving had to come first.