Music In My Soul

  I am weird.  Just weird.  I used to get bullied for it back in school and I made adjustments to make my type of weird not lead me to being victimized by my peers.  I still stayed just weird enough to maintain my individuality and uniqueness and I ran with it.  "Popular" kids would try to laugh at or make a game of hurting me in classes in front of teachers (to which nothing was ever done to stop it even once) or during breaks in junior high that made that two years of my life a living hell.  But once high school came into play, they left me alone to pursue whatever social hierarchy appealed to them.  What mattered to me was that they left the the heck alone and when they did, I had a blast.
  I CHOSE to stay me.  I chose to be me no matter how nasty others tried to treat me for it.  I also chose to find people that like me for who I was and enjoyed my special brand of weird.  My greatest refuge during all the times I didn't fit in, or have a friend during a break to talk to, or felt fat and ugly because the other girls made fun of me (out of jealousy because I was neither), was music.  From the time I could talk, I sang.  By the age of four I would grab a stick and sing into AT anyone smaller than myself that would indulge me by playing along.  By the age of seven I happily stood up in front of my great grandparent's church congregation and sang "Holy Bible, Book Divine" solo.  In music I felt fearless.  Music was what my dna was constructed with, the blood that runs through my veins carries beats and tunes through it, and is the way that I connect to the world around me when I stand as a stranger in so many other ways.

I made my first audition choir by fifth grade and did it again in sixth.  Then I found the cello.  Singing was something I could take with me and do anytime I wanted.  The cello required that I had to take a special bus to the junior high from my sixth grade elementary school and do it as an after school activity before I went to swim team practice five days a week.  I made a solid effort and I was a natural because I understood beats and notes and pitches and my hands and fingers almost acted as if they were designed to handle a cello.  I was no prodigy, but I showed up without fail to this after-school program to sit down behind that cello and make music.  When I had to choose choir or strings for my elective class, I never chose choir.  Playing the cello required diligence and commitment and I could sing on my non-cello time at home or to the radio in the car.

  Each year in junior high I was still allowed to audition for the honor choir because I was a music student, and I made it.  I was first pick for the alto section by my second year.  Music is what I am made of.  By the time I went into high school my freshman year, I had to choose one or the other and cello won without question.  I was taught by band teachers how to play a stringed instrument and although they did all they could, they lacked education on certain aspects of how a string player is supposed to play to prevent hand and wrist injuries.  I made the first level school audition choir by my sophomore year and then the highest level audition choir my junior and senior years.  I continued to prioritize the cello and when we finally got cleared to be allowed to audition for the honor orchestra, I took the plunge.
  With no private training of any kind, band teachers helping me to the best of their ability, and hours upon hours of practice, I auditioned with low hopes.  I made it.  I made chair 10 out of 13.  The following year I auditioned again as a senior and I made chair 5 out of 10.  Just days before we were to start driving to Reno for rehearsals, I opened a can of soup and the sharp lid sliced my middle finger open.  It required five stitches in my hand that I used to hit the notes on my cello.  I lost hope for my honor orchestra opportunity but my teacher forced me to go and shift around to use my good fingers to hit the notes.  This music was hard enough that with all my fingers fully functioning that I had to put in three hours of practice a day and now I had to learn how to shift AND play this extremely hard music?
  I sucked it up and played any notes I could, shifted as much as I could, and faked it when I had to.  When the stitches came out, the scar tissue hurt so badly that playing was never the same for me even after the pain resided and healing finished up.  When I went to college I kept with the cello and my wrists gave out on me.  All those years of playing with no private instruction or positioning knowledge finally culminated into tendonitis flaring up in both wrists and I had to let go of that beautiful instrument.  Sometimes I still sneak off to a music store and sit down behind a cello, tune it up, get proper tension and rosin on the bow, and play until my wrist complains.  It is worth it any time I can sneak off to have that time.  The cello gave me more expression then any words I could find for the 8 wonderful years I got to sit down behind it and make musical vibrations echo from its mahogany body.

  When the cello playing had to stop, I still had my voice.  With the exception of the three years during and after I had mono, I have had my voice to comfort me.  I sing in my car and at my computer.  Some nights I sit in my kids room and sing A Capella to them at bedtime until they fall asleep.  I have music running through my head in an almost constant stream.  I look forward to driving for the music.  I look forward to working out because I get to put in my headphones and do nothing but enjoy music while I get healthy and in shape.  I am that weird chick running or biking down the road that looks like she is talking to herself because I mouth the words of my favorite songs as I jog or bike.  I do not care about the hard stares or musing looks on peoples' faces because guess what?  I may be funny to them mouthing words to a song only I can hear, but I am out there sweating and exercising while they stand there gawking.  I call that a win for me.

I am the cellist in the bottom row in my senior year in a music festival competition with the jazz choir.

  So weird or different or unique or unusual, I am me and I am not ashamed and I am not afraid.  If you don't like me, please go find someone you do like and leave me alone.  I am confident and happy and I hope to raise my children to be the same.  I am eager to laugh and I like it when I make others laugh with and not at me.  I also know now I have NEVER been ugly and the closest to fat I have come has been the price I paid to bring four irreplaceable children into this world.  Worth it.  I work very hard to take care of myself and I see beauty in me inside and out.  All of that exists because God knew to make me with music in my soul so that I always had a friend and always had a way to express myself and fit in somewhere.  God is smart like that.  To Him I always have been and always will be grateful for that gift.  And something I especially love is that my children BEG for music, sing to themselves frequently, and when they sing a song together, my soul swells with the sounds of their voices speaking its language.