Featured Essay: Parts Of Me I Gave Away

by Chiamaka

15th January 2009.

The day I got my very first record.

I was twelve years old—already an obsessed music lover. I had dreams of becoming an opera singer someday, never mind the fact that I had the singing talent of a frog. With a bad cough. 

For Christmas, I wanted a music box. I wanted the kind you see in movies—the one you open to reveal a ballerina twirling in time to the music.

My parents couldn’t find the music box I wanted in time, so they got me a record player instead, along with a record of my favorite song at the time—Taylor Swift’s Fearless. I wish I could tell you I adored it. But, it was hate at first sight. Why would anyone listen to records when headphones exist?

I dumped both the record and the player in the bottom of my closet.

I didn’t touch it again until a few months later, when I heard for the first time that my parents were getting divorced.

I remember feeling like I was drowning in sadness. And the only thing that could ever pull me out of a bad mood was listening to music. I couldn’t find my headphones and I suddenly thought of the record player. I dug it out from where I’d stuffed it. And then I stared at it blankly, because how on earth did you work a record player?

I figured it out in the end.

I placed the needle on the record, held my breath, waited for something—anything.

…

The music streamed out like steam billowing from a coffee pot, wrapping itself around my shoulders, holding me tight. 

And as I listened, I fell in love. I loved how it didn’t scream into my ears. How softly it played the music, gently teasing me. Building up the magic until it burst in my chest like fireworks.

So no, it wasn’t love at first sight. It was love at first sound.

Growing up, I developed an almost manic obsession with records. I collected them the same way some people collect dolls. By the time I was a teenager, I wasn’t just a girl who liked music—I was a girl shaped by it. My bedroom was practically a shrine to vinyl. Milk crates stacked high, records leaning precariously like tired old books, posters curling at the corners.

I had a collection I listened to only when I had a crush on a new guy (Lana Del Rey – Born to Die). And another collection I played when I wanted to feel like a fairytale princess (Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Disney’s Cinderella Soundtrack). And yet another collection I reserved for days when I just wanted to scream out my pent-up Black girl rage (Jazmine Sullivan – “Pick Up Your Feelings”).

Vinyl wasn’t just a hobby. It was my language, my identity, my entire aesthetic.

15th September 2021

It was my first day of college I was in my dorm room, unpacking the records I brought with me. I imagined nights where I’d play my favorite albums and my new college friends would lean back on the dorm floor with me, singing along with me. 

But reality doesn’t always follow our imagined script.

I’d already popped on a record—Joni Mitchell’s Blue—when the door opened and my roommate came in, along with some other people I haven’t met. They stared at me—at my record player—like I was an alien, like I’d shown up dragging around a rotary phone or some museum relic.

“Is something wrong?” I asked my roommate. There’s a pause. And then— “You know you could just use headphones, right?”

The others laughed and my cheeks flamed with embarrassment. A different kind of girl would have replied with a witty comeback. I think about it now and cringe because there were a dozen things I could have said.

But instead, I shut off the record player. I took to only playing music when I was completely alone. And slowly the thing I loved became something I needed to hide, something I was ashamed of.

I was eighteen, desperate to be liked, to belong. So in one impulsive, self-destructive swoop, I gave them all away. Every album, every sleeve, every crackling memory. I gave away myself.

I remember boxing them up. I remember handing them over to the grim-faced owner of the first record store I found. He kept asking if I was sure I wanted to sell them all—and I kept saying yes, even though everything inside me was screaming no. And I remember the silence afterward—the silence where music used to be.

I told myself I was growing up. But I didn’t just lose my records, I lost music. Because none of my songs ever sounded the same on a speaker, or headphones, or anything else.

Every time I heard a song that once lived on my turntable, I felt the hollow where my collection had been. It was like losing a limb and still feeling the ghost of it.

18th May 2025

I lost my job that day.

And the world was pressing down on my shoulders, making it a little too hard to breathe.

I was walking home and decided to take a longer route. The evening was cool, violet dusk falling like spilled ink across the sky, a breeze tugging at the edges of my coat.

Right at the end of the street was a brightly lit shop with the words Justin Records emblazoned on the door. I hadn’t been inside a record shop in…years.

I moved slowly, a woman in a trance, until I was right there, hovering at the entrance. The beginning of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams was playing softly, reeling me in. The store smelled of dust and wood polish, like an attic or a library.

I went in and spent almost an hour just soaking up the air, reveling in the magic of being surrounded by so many records again. The familiar harmonies seeped into me like sunlight finding its way into a room that had been dark for too long. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that sound—not just the music itself, but the crackle, that fragile imperfection that makes vinyl so alive.

I stood there, surrounded by shelves of other people’s treasures, and felt a part of myself stirring awake. The young girl who once spent hours sitting cross-legged on the floor, singing along to scratchy records—that girl was still here. She had just been waiting for me to come back.

So I bought a record. Just one. The very one that started it all: Once Upon a December on vinyl. I slipped it into my bag and carried it home like a sacred object.

When I placed the record on the turntable and lowered the needle, my living room filled with that soft crackle, then the first note. It felt like the music was echoing in my soul, touching all the darkest, loneliest parts of me and spreading a little light.

And something in me clicked. That soft, familiar crackle? That was me coming home.

It’s easy to give away parts of ourselves when we’re young. We trade authenticity for belonging, passion for the safety of blending in. Sometimes we don’t even realize what we’ve lost until decades later. 

My records weren’t just objects. They were time capsules—each one holding a piece of my heart, my history, my becoming. When I handed them over, I thought I was letting go of “just music.” In truth, I was severing a connection to myself.

But the beautiful thing about music is that it waits for you. Patiently. It lingers in the grooves, in the static, in the air between notes. It forgives you for leaving, and welcomes you back without bitterness.

Now, when I hold a record in my hands, I feel its weight differently. I feel it pulsing, alive, like it’s carrying not just sound but memory, emotion, and second chances. Every time the needle drops, I remember who I was—and who I am allowed to be again.

Chiamaka is a writer and creative designer who believes in the quiet power of stories to transform the way we see ourselves and one another. She writes about love, memory, and the tangled journey of girlhood into womanhood. When she’s not writing, she’s dreaming up new creative projects and chasing wonder in everyday life. She is a writer for PawnersPaper Magazine.