I hate music. I know I’ll face years of social rejection for saying so, but I have to be honest.

I hate it when my friends blast music in their cars. I hate it when I can’t distinguish between a B-flat and a B-sharp (or even between a B-flat and a G-flat, for that matter). I hate when an annoyingly catchy song will not leave me in peace. Frankly, there’s little else that drains me as much as having Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” running on repeat in my head.

Generally speaking, I don’t consider myself to be a hater. I reserve the sentiment for music, protesters and cilantro. Yet the reactions I get from people who learn of my distaste for music are extraordinarily intolerant.

When I was seated in an assembly the other day, the speaker challenged the audience to find someone who hated music. He claimed that all humans feel an emotional connection to rhythm and melody.

Lest the other students think of me as an emotionless robot, I had to bury my bright red face in my arms.

But why should I have to be ashamed of my likes and dislikes? I am convinced that there must be some other closeted music-haters out there. Perhaps they, like me, are too ashamed to speak out in a music-loving society.

I’ll admit that once upon a time, I too reveled in the joys of song. Like my peers, I believed that someday I would be singing professionally.

But one day during rehearsal for the sixth grade music concert, the teacher cut us off, saying the “melody was being mutilated.” She asked everyone to try again but told me to just mouth along with the rest of the class.

And just like that, my childhood singing aspirations were extinguished.

Maybe I could have gotten over the pain of that traumatic experience. Perhaps I could have learned to love music once more.

But even if I could learn to sing, I think the main reason that I hate music is that it’s so hard to find music that satisfies. Most of the time, I browse through the songs I have and realize that, as much as I would like to listen to music, I don’t know what to listen to.

Perhaps I’m yearning for music that is not yet there. Perhaps, unlike my friends blasting their music, I just haven’t found the right genre for me.

So maybe “hate” is the wrong word; as the Plain White T’s once said, it is a rather strong word. But at least until I find the music that satisfies me, please let me “really, really, really not like” it.