Paper Crown by Alec Benjamin

This was one of the first songs I ever shared that truly represented how I was feeling—before I had the courage or the language to say it out loud.

I remember sharing Paper Crown with my ex, and later with our marriage counselor, Richard. It wasn’t just a song to me. It was how I was communicating. It was me saying, this is what’s happening inside me, without having to defend or over-explain it.

Richard listened.
He understood immediately.

He said something that stayed with me: music speaks to you.
And he was right.

During marriage counseling, I felt like I was finally being heard—finally slowing down enough to reflect, to connect, to try. Counseling was helping me. But to my ex, it was never about healing. He believed Richard was a scam, that he was asking for too much money, that it wasn’t worth investing more than $50 a session.

I didn’t see it that way.

To me, healing was worth the cost.
Our marriage was worth the cost.
I was worth the cost.

This song hit every single chord of what I was living at the time—the exhaustion, the quiet self-doubt, the feeling of trying so hard to hold everything together while feeling unseen. And what stands out to me now, looking back, is how often my pain was missed even when I was offering it so clearly.

My ex would analyze and judge the lyrics of upbeat, fun, dancy songs—questioning what they meant or what they implied—but he never took the time to sit with the songs that reflected how I was actually feeling. The ones that were vulnerable. The ones that were honest. The ones that were asking to be heard.

Paper Crown wasn’t subtle.
It was my truth laid out in music.

And now, with distance and healing, I see it clearly: this song wasn’t just describing my pain—it was revealing the imbalance. I was trying to communicate, to repair, to reflect. And he had already decided not to listen.

This song marks an important moment in my journey—not because it fixed anything, but because it showed me something I wasn’t ready to accept yet. Music understood me before I understood myself.

That’s why this song begins this series.
Because it reminds me that my voice was always there.
I just had to learn how to trust it.