Thinking Thursday
One Mask: What Metallica’s “One” Meant to a Sixteen-Year-Old Black Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains
I was driving home yesterday when Metallica’s “One” came on the radio, and without thinking, I turned it up and started rocking out—hard. Head nodding, mouth moving, muscle memory pulling me back through time. I knew every word. But more than that, I felt every word. Because that song? It raised me.
The first time I heard it, I was sixteen, newly enrolled in a boarding school tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had always dreamed of going away to school, believing it would change my life—and in many ways, it did. It was the first time I’d ever had physical distance from my mother. We lived alone together for most of my childhood, and while I know she tried, the truth is—she was abusive. Physically. Emotionally. Loud silences, backhands, insults that settled like ash into my skin.
So when I arrived at that school, I was both terrified and free. Free from home, but still not safe. Because now I was one of h Black kids in a student body of five hundred, trying to blend in, trying to belong, trying to survive.
Mom had rented a neon-yellow compact car to drop me off. We unpacked my modest belongings—a trunk and a secondhand army duffel—and walked the grounds together. The sky was impossibly blue. The air smelled clean, unlike the city. There were fields of hay, horses, plateaus. And masks. Everyone wore them. Including me.
My roommate was a 14-year-old Mormon girl who wasted no time asking if I was gay. I wasn’t frilly—I had a mural of magazine cutouts on the wall, many of them girls. I wore a jean jacket because we couldn’t afford leather. She had seen the clues. The unspoken queerness. The not-quite-fitting-in.
We were poor. Not food-stamp poor, but “rob Peter to pay Paul” poor. I was at that school because of scholarships and Christian charity. In return, I “volunteered” at fundraisers, where white Southern women praised how articulate I was as I handed them sweet tea. I smiled. I performed. I wore the mask.
Saturday nights, students gathered at the Rec. There was a pool table, arcade games, cable TV, a deep fryer, and a nacho cheese pump that always made the whole place smell like childhood and cafeteria grease. After working the dinner shift in the dining hall, I’d shower off the smell of food and sweat and walk across campus. The music blared from the Rec, echoing across the valley. I’d show up, nod along to whatever was playing—not quite BDP, not quite Beastie Boys. Just enough to blend in.
At 9:00 PM, everything changed. That’s when MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball came on. And one night, the video started—not with music, but with gunfire. Screaming. The sound of war. The opening chords of “One” by Metallica.
I froze.
I’d never heard it before. Never seen the video. And I was transfixed.
The song whispered to the part of me I had locked away. The part that knew pain. That knew isolation. That was trying to survive in a world where being a Black girl, a queer girl, a poor girl meant masking all the time.
I wore a lot of masks at that school. The polite Black girl. The scholarship student. The not-too-weird one. But I also wore the mask of someone who wasn’t hurting. Who hadn’t just left a turbulent home life behind. I didn’t talk about that part. I barely let myself feel it. But music has a way of reaching under the skin, past the masks.
And this song didn’t knock. It broke in.
The lyrics grabbed me by the chest:
“Hold my breath as I wish for death / Oh please God, wake me.”
I was sixteen. And maybe it sounds dramatic to some—but it wasn’t to me. I’d already lived through more than a sixteen-year-old should. This song didn’t just speak to me. It testified for me.
Years later, I watched Ryan Coogler’s *Sinners* and felt the same current of recognition. When I found out that *he*, too, was inspired by “One,” I nearly lost it. The same song that carried me through silence and rage had helped shape a cinematic masterwork rooted in grief, war, survival, and Blackness. It reminded me that I wasn’t alone. That my secret love for a metal song wasn’t strange. It was spiritual. Prophetic, even.
Back then, I never could’ve told anyone. Not in the SWATS—Southwest Atlanta—where hip hop was everything. Where being a Black girl into Metallica was unthinkable. So I kept it to myself. Just me and my Walkman. Orange foam headphones pressed tight against my ears.
Even after I transferred back to public school, I kept listening. Metallica. AC/DC. Led Zeppelin. On car rides to work. In my room. In secret. I never went to a concert—especially not in the South. Not for that kind of music. Not for someone like me.
But eventually, I bought the Black Album. I started to trust people with my secret. And to my surprise, I found others like me. Black folks. Queer folks. People who had also found something holy in the noise.
Now, I don’t wear that mask anymore.
Today, when “One” came on, I smiled through the tears that didn’t fall.
Because I’m still here. And the girl who once clung to those lyrics like a lifeline? She made it.
She’s still singing.💎
If this piece resonated with you, share it with someone who still carries a piece of their younger self.
And tell me—was there a song that saved you?
Drop a comment, share your soundtrack, or pass this along.
Because we’re still singing. And some of us just need to be heard.