I’ve spent most of my life trying to make sense of the world around me. Myself. Others. The why behind the what. So when I sat down to write the first “Jam Journal” of the semester, I froze. I asked myself, What music is important to me? More importantly: Why? The page stayed blank.

In search of answers, I rummaged through my Leuchtturm1917 — the one dedicated to all the philosophy I’ve collected — when a friend approached. I explained my dilemma, and he told me that it would come naturally, because I have music in my veins.

Cliché, I know.

But maybe music really is that simple. If music really was in my veins, perhaps it wasn’t just something I loved, but how I moved through the world.

Maybe that’s why music has never felt like something separate from my life. It’s woven into the way I remember, the way I grieve, the way I love and most importantly, the way I understand myself. To me, music isn’t simply the soundtrack playing behind my life. Somehow, it has become the language through which I live.

Nearly four years ago, I survived a tragic accident that left my body in a dire state. I was told there wasn’t anything that could remedy what happened to me. In the months after, through grueling physical therapy, I regained basic function — but my body still didn’t feel like my own. I couldn’t push it to its former potential.

In those sterile rooms, surrounded by equipment that felt more like reminders of limitation than tools of recovery, my playlist played through the speakers. Songs I knew by heart filled the space as I worked through each exercise. I started moving with them — a tap of my finger, a sway in my chair, whatever my body would allow. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time in months that my body felt like it was communicating with itself again.

I remember “The Bitch Is Back” by Elton John blaring through the room as I struggled through another exercise. Its defiance felt almost ridiculous against the reality of my recovery, but maybe that was exactly what I needed: I moved with it.

For those few minutes, I wasn’t thinking about what my body couldn’t do or how far I still had to go. I was just listening. Just moving. Just me.

Music has also been how I’ve learned to understand the feelings I couldn’t name. There was someone I wrote about in a column once, who I realized I cared for only after I had already begun losing him. At the time, I tried to reason my way through it: timing, distance, whether a love without a future could still be worth having. But alone with my music, those calculations became quieter.

When I saw NIKI live, she played “Take Care,” and I heard it differently. Olivia Dean’s “A Couple Minutes” had already given me permission to sit with the tenderness of something fleeting; the music gave me permission to let go. For a few minutes, I stopped trying to make sense of what I felt and simply felt it — the love, the grief, the gratitude.

The songs didn’t answer my questions so much as teach me how to sit with them. Together, they made my feelings easier to understand — and, eventually, easier to feel.

Some may think that unraveling yourself amidst a song is like tearing yourself open over and over again — damaging. To me, it was the opposite. It was healing.

It allowed me to discuss how I felt without bottling up my emotions, without performing the smile I’d perfected. Music became a second language — the one that let others understand me, and let me understand myself. In my heart of hearts, I think I’ve always known this.

If you know me, you’d probably describe me as bubbly — always smiling, always laughing. But I still struggle to display my emotions. It’s only when I’m alone — in the comfort of my pillow fort, a single figure in a patch of grass, anywhere I can’t be perceived — that I relax. Earbuds in. Record spinning. That’s when I allow myself to feel.

If you were to stumble upon me alone, you might find me cycling through songs like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division, “Dancing with Myself” by Billy Idol or “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Cass Elliot.

Each song pulls a different emotion to the surface, giving me permission to feel what I can’t show. Maybe that’s what it means to have music in my veins — it circulates through me, carrying emotions I don’t always know how to name.

Music translates my life. It lets me share myself without needing the perfect words, which is a gift I’ll never take for granted. My friend was right. Music runs through me — not because I’m special, but because I finally learned to let it. I stopped analyzing and started feeling. And somehow, in the spaces between the notes, I found the words I never had.

“Jam Journal” is a rotating column featuring a new Daily Trojan editor in each installment, commenting on the music most important to them. Andrew Cardenas is DEIA director.