Fahad Al Abdullah

In a world where we rush to nurse any ache in our body, we often forget the echoing injuries of the mind. Mental health doesn’t leave physical scars, yet it breaks people down every day.

It conceals itself behind acceptable academics, forced smiles and chaotic schedules. It’s a crisis that can look invisible on the outside, yet drown someone from the inside — until one small thing, or being, reminds us to breathe.

For me, that reminder came through music — and through a spoiled cat who refuses to eat anything but salmon.

He wasn’t the serene companion I imagined before adopting him. He was pure, unfiltered chaos wrapped in fur as soft as cashmere — a four-legged tornado with a talent for destruction.

Podrick treated my cystic fibrosis flashcards as if they’d personally insulted him and made it his life’s mission to launch them off my desk, one by one — like an unhinged professor rejecting my entire education and celebrating my academic downfall in real time.

Yet for all his crimes against productivity, he gave me something that medicine never could: perspective. In the middle of exhaustion, self-doubt and final exams worth 70% of my grade, Podrick reminded me that mental health isn’t about staying composed — it’s about the moments that pull you out of your head and back into life.

His chaos forced me to pause, to recollect and to realize that healing doesn’t always look like silence or stillness. Sometimes, it looks like a cat knocking everything off the table just to remind you that the world won’t end if you take a breath.

Mental health often gets reduced to a checklist — sleep eight hours, meditate, exercise. But it’s rarely that simple. It’s unpredictable. More often than not, mental health reduction is thunderous.

As much as I adore Podrick, his meows weren’t enough to battle it. I needed something to drown it out — and that came through music.

Music has always been my way of quieting the noise that lives inside my head. It became my medicine — one without prescriptions or side effects.

Even in crowded places like concerts, I found stillness. I remember standing in the middle of a Coldplay concert when, suddenly, my world stopped.

“Charlie Brown” was the surprise song of the night — an anthem I’ve carried from adolescence to adulthood. Its euphoric chords and symphony of liberation rewired the very way I felt joy, both as a child and now. I recorded it live not for the video, but for the feeling. I’d replay it during long study nights or anxious mornings — and I still do.

Looking back, I realize that mental health isn’t something you fix once and move on from. It comes in pieces that need to be glued together, and the glue is whatever brings you back to yourself.

For me, it was the rhythm of music and the mischief of a cat. Between his late-night sprints across my apartment and the playlists that filled the quiet afterward, they reminded me that healing doesn’t always come in silence — sometimes, it comes in noise.

Fahad Al Abdullah, 18, attends Loyola Marymount University and is majoring in biology with a minor in biochemistry. After often spending his summers in Marquette visiting relatives as a child, he is studying to become a biomedical engineer.