Closing the Book

In an effort to close the book on you, A, I am reposting some of my unsent letters from this year. I deleted them because I was afraid you would find them and use them against me. I am not afraid of you anymore. And they may help someone who is processing their own difficult situation. If you find them some day, I hope you find some value from them.

You Are Not The Author of My Story

I am not willing to let you write this narrative. I am not willing to let you paint me as this crazy person who can’t be trusted to interact appropriately with people. I am not willing to buy into the crap you are selling. I have let you make this be all about me for more than a year. I believed and internalized your criticisms. I have spent so much time second-guessing myself and feeling so insecure about my social interactions. I should never have given you the power to write my story.

This isn’t about me, A. This is about you. This should be your story, not mine. You say I sent you too many texts. But, I have polled people about texting habits with their friends and there are a wide range of practices. Some people text their friends all day everyday. Some people never text at all. I was somewhere in the middle. Sending a lot of texts doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person or socially inept. More importantly, you texted back most of the time and you never said you wanted fewer texts. So, instead of saying “M texted too much, M is a crazy harasser,” the story should say “A apparently has a very low tolerance for other people’s texting habits and he had expectations about texting habits that he failed to demonstrate or communicate to M. That failure to communicate eventually caused problems and led to their falling out.”

You say I was crazy and disrespectful for trying to reach out to you after S told me you no longer wanted to communicate with me. But, you and S are not the same person. I don’t know S. I didn’t know if S had permission to speak for you. And, what S said was so completely at odds with your behavior leading up to S’s request that I had reason to wonder whether you even knew about it. When you finally told me yourself not to contact you, I stopped contacting you. Instead of saying “M ignored clear boundaries by contacting A after S said not to, so M is a crazy freak,” the story should say “A was too weak to contact M himself and express his wishes so he had S do it for him and, in doing so created a confusing and ambiguous situation for everyone that was significantly more complicated than it needed to be.”

When, half a year later, I asked to return to choir, you assumed it was all about wanting to pursue you. You implied that it was all part of some crazy obsession I apparently had with you and you made the members of the Board think I was crazy. But my request to return to choir was, unsurprisingly, about wanting to sing with the choir, not about wanting to bother you. So, instead of saying “M demonstrated poor boundaries once again by asking the choir if she could sing again,” the story should say, “M asked to return to choir. A assumed she would only ask because of an obsession with him and could not see or understand why M might just want to sing with choir. A then made other people think M was obsessed with him and made the choir deny M’s request and terminate M’s membership. Since A assumes everything is about him, A apparently has a really high opinion of himself and must think he is God’s gift to women.”

The story you are selling has consistently been wrong A. Instead of the title of the story being “M is a crazy person with boundary issues,” it should be “A has serious and chronic issues with communication, hides behind other people when it is time to communicate and has still, to this day, never communicated with M about what happened.”

You know, nothing like this has ever happened to me in my 38-year story, A. You are the only person who has ever had these issues or thought these things about me. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if your story includes other instances where your fear of communication caused problems for you and other people. So, instead of urging me to get help, you should get help yourself.

And, while the tone of this note up until now has been angry and harsh, I will soften it here. I know it is hard to overcome faults and that mistakes happen. I know I, too, made mistakes during our interactions. Communicating with people and navigating conflict is hard and no one does it perfectly. I have consistently been willing to acknowledge this and cut you some slack. It isn’t your failure to communicate that makes me angry with you so much as your complete unwillingness to acknowledge that you made mistakes and to be empathetic and forgiving of mine. From the beginning, I have treated you like a human being, flawed and imperfect but with value. You have treated me like garbage and like an evil degenerate. You have been filled with rage and hostility for no obvious reason and you have made no attempt at all to understand my side of all of this. That is why I am angry. That is why I refuse to let you write my story. You made no attempt to understand my point of view so you have no right to claim authorship. Go write your own story, A. It needs some work.

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Walking In The Wind

I went for a walk tonight. There is weather coming and there was a lot of wind. I love walking in the wind. It is one of the few things that knocks down my depression, at least on a temporary basis. I have been fighting a pretty deep, dark depression for most of the last year and my outlook has been really grim. But when the wind blows so hard that I can’t hear anything and I am almost knocked off my feet, I feel so alive. So, I am very briefly feeling upbeat and I am going to try to harness that feeling to write you a message that addresses some of the things I need to say without letting the melancholy color the meaning. I also want to say goodbye.

First, I ask that you suspend your prior opinions for the moment and cut me some slack. I know it is odd that I haven’t moved on from all of this. I know that my past actions made me seem like an obsessed, emotional, crazy mess. Please try to understand that I am not simply sad about the loss of your friendship and the choir. I am struggling with out of control anxiety and major depression that has been debilitating and has negatively affected every area of my life. For much of the past year, I have not been me. I have been my conditions. They are in the drivers’ seat and it is really hard to fight them and to be normal at the moment. They have interfered with and slowed my progress coming to terms with my job loss, with how things ended with you, and with the loss of choir. I have to be honest, I really hate being like this. I hate who I am right now and who I was when things blew up with you. But I have not always been like this. I have had these conditions under control in the past and I will get them under control again. I believe that, at one point during our acquaintanceship you respected the person who I was. I want you to know that I will be that person again. Really, I still am her. She is just buried under a heap of fear and self-loathing and she is a little bit distracted by the efforts to dig out. But, she will get there, I promise.

Second, I want you to know that, while things have been really hard for me and I have had some really dark and disturbing depressive thoughts and have often despaired of getting out from under this depression, I don’t want you to be concerned. I am committed to fighting it. I am working with professionals and, though progress is tedious, I am going to continue to try to find my way back to the light. I was listening to This Little Light of Mine (the Moses Hogan arrangement) today on the Choral Stream and I am going to find a way to take my dying ember, fan the flame, and let my light shine again. I won’t lie, your support and the support of the choir would help me tremendously in that fight and it would be welcome. But I understand that isn’t possible. And that is okay. This isn’t your problem. I will find strength from somewhere else. I will find other allies. I am going to beat this back.

Third, I want to apologize again for my role in the way things ended and to reiterate how much I regret what happened and regret the loss of your friendship. Mistakes were made and things fell apart. There isn’t much point to rehashing the specifics but I particularly want to apologize for implying that you lack empathy. I don’t believe that. I truly valued you and your friendship. I know we didn’t talk for long but I appreciated your perspective on life, your kindness, your dedication, and your sense of humor. I really enjoyed your company. I think, however briefly, you filled a void for me and that may explain why it has been so hard to come to terms with this. I want you to know that I understand that, for whatever reason, you believe that you need to have me out of your life. While it certainly doesn’t make me happy, I will continue to respect your decision to go no contact and, with the exception of this goodbye letter, I will not attempt to reach out to you, no matter what happens.

Fourth, you can contact me any time. If you ever need me, do not hesitate to reach out. If you need a sympathetic ear or just a good laugh, if you find yourself in darkness, if you just need companionable silence or simply someone to talk to, you can come to me and I won’t turn you away. I will put on a pot of coffee and welcome you in, no questions asked. I am always willing to listen to a friend in need and, despite all the events of the past year, I do consider you a friend. You know where I live. You know how to reach me. Don’t feel like you can’t reach out if you need me. [My coffee will probably suck though since I don’t drink coffee. As the daughter of Lutherans, I keep a coffee pot and coffee in the house but I have no clue how to make good coffee. Just a warning].

Finally, please know that you and the choir will always have a special place in my heart. You introduced me to some of my favorite choral pieces and, believe it or not, you turned me on to Eric Whitacre. I was familiar with his work but I wasn’t really a fan before doing Sleep with you and now I love all of his stuff. So, thank you for that. Working with you as a director was truly life-changing for me. Participating with the group also helped me through a tough time in my life and I will never forget that. I will never forget you. I hope that some day you can remember me fondly and not with trepidation or ire. I hope that someday you will look back and remember me as a friend. Go well, my friend. Take care of yourself. Perhaps we will meet again in another lifetime.

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Might as well be ants

Do you ever look at the human race and think about how weird we are as a species? The world is full of different types of birds, animals, and insects. They all just focus on eating, sleeping, procreating, and surviving until they die. They aren’t concerned about their purpose. They don’t get angsty about whether their friends or colleagues like them. They don’t worry about cheating spouses or backstabbing boyfriends. They don’t agonize about whether some boy or girl is interested in them. They don’t worry about leaving a legacy or making a name for themselves. They just are. They just act. They live moment to moment until they die.

But we humans feel the need to build things, to create art and music, to destroy things, to name and label and rank as we go through the world. We put on performances for each other, watch other people play games, gather together in large groups to discuss internet cat videos or to build things with dominos or see who can eat the most hot dogs. We spend a significant part of our lives worrying about what other people are thinking, misconstruing intentions, and missing opportunities because we are afraid to ask. We worry about the meaning of life and have existential crises. We hypothesize and theorize and try to solve mysteries. We regret our actions and mistakes. We love and forgive, hate and punish. We focus on the future and forget to live in the moment. We spend so much energy on these things. Why? We are all just going to die someday. A dead person is no less dead than a dead squirrel. When viewing the human race from the outside, there is a sort of ridiculous pomposity about us.

When I think about this, it makes our conflict seem so unimportant. We are both just blips in the long track of history. I was upset because you saw me as insignificant but I failed to see that I actually am insignificant. We all are. I am just one of many many clinically depressed people. You are just one of many many people who have run away from those who cause discomfort. The world is filled to the brim with cowards and sad sacks. Why should my pain warrant any attention or concern? I could die tomorrow and it would mean nothing in the long run. In one hundred years no one will remember that any of us existed. My chronic sadness, my loss of joy, my intense pain that I don’t understand and can’t name, they are all unimportant to you, to the world, to the universe. So, why are they important to me? Why can’t I let this experience go? I wish I was an ant. It would be so much easier.

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Karma

I am so sick right now, both physically and mentally. My stomach has been really upset the last couple of weeks and I think it may be another diverticulitis episode. If you remember last year in the last month when we still talked, I mentioned feeling sick a bunch of times and almost missed rehearsal a number of times. It ended up being a “mild case” of diverticulitis. It hurt like hell. I would hate to experience a severe case. The pain and discomfort I am feeling right now feels a lot like what I was experiencing then. Odd that it should surface at the same time it did last year. Not only am I “celebrating” the anniversary of that illness, I am also “celebrating” the anniversary of the end of our friendship, the end of my life as a choral singer, and the beginning of the worst year of my life. Feel free to bring out the deflated black balloons and the nails on chalkboard noise markers. No wonder I am depressed. The depression is growing worse. I randomly tear up several times a day. I have no desire to do anything or see anyone and I am barely able to get to work everyday and do my job. I always thought that depression was not severe unless it involved self harm. I never realized severe depression could encompass this level of ineffectiveness. I may not be self harming or suicidal but I am not living. I am a husk, a shell filling space and marking time. I am not dead but I am not alive. For the longest time after things ended, I desperately wished that I could go back and sing with the group. I don’t wish that any more. I don’t think this husk person couldsing. Husks don’t have voices. But, even though I can’t sing, I still miss you, A, and I miss the group. And that is part of my burden, my pain.

I feel like this must all be karma, like I am being punished for creating so much pain and trouble for you and the group. Did I ruin your relationship with choral music, too? I really hope not. I never wanted to hurt you or cause you pain and distress. I was so stupid. I wish I had known I was causing so much trouble so I could have done something to stop it before any damage was done. I wish there was some way to make it all better, to bandage your wounds and put salve on mine. I wish we could heal and then forget the past and start over as if nothing ever happened. But, even if we heal, there will still be scars. I did too much damage. I guess that is why karma is punishing me now by making me a lonely silent soggy husk person doubled over in pain. This is the price I must pay for liking you and the group too much and for being stupid and sensitive. I am sorry.

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Your Warmth

It is snowing again and I am freezing. It is supposed to snow next week, too. I can’t remember the last time I was warm. I am so tired of shivering and huddling under blankets and trying to use my frozen fingers to type or write or play the piano. Why won’t Spring come? It is mid-April. It should be here. I desperately need it. I need the green and the flowers and the fresh air. I need to go outside and smell the smell of grilling and look at the blue sky and feel the warm sun on my skin. I need it more this year than I have ever needed it in all of my years on this Earth. I am tired, tired of shivering, tired of trying, tired of living through this gloomy and mundane existence. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep fighting day in and day out, reaching for light that isn’t there, looking for peace and life and renewal that don’t and can’t exist for me.

I am not a warrior. I am a healer, a care-giver, a nurturer. I am a singer of lullabies not a yeller of war cries. I wasn’t made for endless battles. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the weapons. I don’t have the drive. I don’t even have the heart. For more than a year, I have hoped that you would talk to me, that we could make peace and heal our wounds so that I could repair at least one of the broken parts of my life. I had faith that eventually we could make things right, that you would look at me and see my kindness, you would hear my voice and recognize my heart, and you would understand that I am a decent and sensitive human being. But I have lost that faith. I no longer believe that it will happen. And the thought of having that conversation with you no longer fills me with hope. It just fills me with fatigue.

I am too tired now to talk to you, and too frozen. When I picture the conversation, I see me huddled and cold and shivering and too exhausted to make eye contact or put together a sentence and I see you confused and unable to figure out what to do with me. I no longer see warmth or peace or light. So, I think I am finally giving up on you. I no longer have the strength to fight for you. I can’t go to you and, if I could I would not be able to share any warmth with you. I am too cold and tired and drained from this perpetual winter between us. If Spring is ever going to come for us, it will have to be because you choose to bring it and to share your warmth and sing me your song. You will have to help me thaw so that we can combine our warmth and strength to bring our friendship into summer. I hope you are warm and strong, my friend, because one of us needs to be.

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You were the spark

You were the spark that started this forest fire. I feel terrible about that. I don’t think you ever wanted to cause me pain. I don’t think you would want to see me in pain now. And I suspect that, if you knew how bad things have gotten for me, you would feel terrible for your role in it. You are a kind person, even if you sometimes avoid confrontation to the point of causing conflict. I don’t want you to hurt on my account. I don’t want you to know that I went to the psychiatrist for an intake appointment yesterday and I barely got through the door to her office before completely breaking down. She took my blood pressure and it was 144/80 which is ridiculously high for me. My anxiety has gotten so bad that I am constantly on edge and my blood pressure is high most of the time now. The only way I can manage the anxiety is exercising until I am so exhausted that I don’t have any energy to be anxious. After yesterday’s appointment, I power-walked through our town for an hour and a half and it still wasn’t enough to burn out my anxiety.

And it left me depressed. My depression has gotten so bad that I no longer have any hope that things will get better and I am perpetually on the verge of tears. The psychiatrist asked me her first question and I burst into tears and cried continuously through the entire appointment (and the drive home) while I tried to relay all the things that happened in the last year to bring me to this point. But I couldn’t even talk about you. My feelings about what happened with you are too painful. The closest I could get was a sideways mention of being kicked out of the group. I managed to tell her about losing my job and that now the slightest bit of tension at work has me convinced that I am going to be yelled at or fired. I told her about my complete inability to interact with people, about my irritability, about how every single conversation now begins with me having to squash down a sudden need to cry. I told her about the grayness that has permeated my whole world. I even told her about the brief period when I engaged in self harm as a teenager, something I have been too embarrassed to say aloud to anyone in more than twenty years. But, I couldn’t talk about you. The thought of you embarrasses and hurts me even more than that. I couldn’t talk about you because the wound is still so raw, even after all these months, that I literally just sob and shake when I try to talk about it and I can barely get sentences out. Even when I get the words out, they only skim the surface.

And I am so embarrassed that I let you have this much power over me, that I haven’t moved past this. I worry that this all indicates that I am crazy, that there is really something wrong with me, something unfixable. Why does this hurt so damn much? From the facts of the situation, it shouldn’t. I liked you, respected you, and enjoyed your company and you seemed to appreciate me but we never had the chance to really be close. And then you cut me out of your life and the group without ever explaining, without even talking to me. That was pretty awful and should make me hate you. But I don’t.

I think the problem is that, what happened with you was a turning point in my timeline. I have managed anxiety my whole life and have mostly kept it under wraps. But then, it all started to be too much and it started creeping into more and more areas of my life until I realized I needed to start getting it under control. When I really started talking to you, I was in the process of making some positive changes in my life. I was on an upswing and I was optimistic. I thought my life was going to start to get better and I was truly happy. Becoming your friend sort of epitomized that feeling. You are so full of sunshine and light and optimism even when you are dealing with your own life struggles. You radiate positivity. You sort of represented the life I was working towards. And, when you rejected me in such a hostile way, it was like the universe was saying that isn’t the type of life I am meant to have. I was so fragile that your rejection took so much of my identity. I stopped seeing myself as the confident, smart, reliable and down-to-earth person I have always striven to be. I stopped seeing a singer and a respected professional. All I could see was the insecure crazy freak that you saw. And since then, that crazy freak has steadily overtaken my persona. She is me now and I don’t know what to do with her and I am terrified that she is who I am meant to be. I don’t want any part of her. But she has such a grip on me that I don’t know if I will ever be rid of her. I am so scared and our rift is so tied into that fear. I think that is why I keep wishing we could make amends. It feels like if we did that, I might have a shot at kicking crazy freak me to the curb. I know that makes no sense but it is what I feel.

So, you were the spark that started this forest fire but it has continued burning because the conditions that exist in me are the ideal conditions for self-destructive fire. That’s why I don’t want you to discover how rough things are for me and I don’t want you to feel guilt. You were the spark but I allowed the wind to fan the flames.

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I Want Out of this Box

Does anyone else ever feel like you are trapped in an invisible sound-proof box? I walk around everyday carrying this box with me. People notice the space that I, and the box, take up. When I speak, they may acknowledge me. They take the things I give without much thought. Some appreciate my presence, my competence, my reliability. But they never really see me. They never really hear me. From outside my box, I sound and appear quiet, pleasant, and non-descript.

In reality, I am in my box screaming, shouting, ululating trying to be heard, to make enough noise so that my existence will register on someone’s radar so that someone will understand my pain, anguish, fear, rage, excitement, intense joy, or glee. I am painting the walls of my box with vivid colors and designs and projecting bright flashing lights through the cracks. Sometimes my paintings are intensely beautiful and the light is vibrant. Sometimes the paintings are dark and twisted and the light has an unpleasant strobe-like effect. It doesn’t matter because no one ever sees it. They just see soft bland faded pastels in cold unfeeling fluorescent lighting and they hear the faint tinny sound of elevator music, so easy to bypass and ignore.

Usually I go through the days yelling, dancing, and pounding my fists on the walls until I slump exhausted and despairing in the corner. A couple of times, I have been loud enough that some of my wildness has poked through the box’s seams and someone has noticed. They truly see me. I get so excited that I clamor and shine and paint with even more vigor than before, sending my s.o.s, trying to keep their attention. But the glimpse of my wildness, my intensity, freaks the person out. They reinforce the box’s walls, add extra tape to the seams, and back away slowly and nervously, making sure they won’t ever see the real me again. I collapse weeping and defeated in the corner of my box. I lay there, quiet, lifeless, abandoning all light, sound, and color for a time, too exhausted and broken to try to escape.

Eventually, I slowly pick myself up and start dancing and shouting and painting and shining my light again. Because I want out of the damn box, already. I want to be heard and accepted and understood. But each time I fall quiet and defeated, my voice grows a little more hoarse, my colors grow a bit more faded, and my light is a bit dimmer. If I don’t escape, eventually I will be absorbed by the box and all its blandness and, if someone finally opens it, they will find it quiet, dark, and empty.

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This Is What I Would Say If We Could Talk

I think constantly about the mess I made by trying to befriend you. I should have realized you would not be interested in spending time with someone like me. We come from admittedly different backgrounds, we have different interests and our lives have taken different paths. But, for some reason, I wanted you to know me. I wanted to tell you things that I found interesting and hear what you thought. While your surface self was so different from me, I could see that there were layers to you and that below that surface person, in the part that makes up your fundamental approach to life and your philosophy about the world, we had a lot in common. It was like you were what I could have been if some things in the nature and nurture that created me had been tweaked. I wanted to run things by you and see how those tweaks would create variances in our responses.

And, like everyone who knows you, I wanted to bask in your light. You make the people around you feel like they matter and I am so awkward that I rarely feel that when I interact with people. People appreciate and value my work product but they seldom see or value ME. So, I selfishly tried to befriend you and I didn’t think about the difficulty that might create for you. I assumed you would be as fascinated by me as I was by you. But, as the introvert of the two of us, I never really put enough of me out there for you to see and recognize before I tried to make friends. I don’t wear my inner self on my sleeve. I hide myself away most of the time and, while I write a lot, I don’t talk much. So, for you, it must have been like being approached by a stranger and that must have really weirded you out. I am so sorry for putting you through that.

Worse, though, I am sorry that I was stupid enough to risk our professional relationship. You are, by far, the best fit I have had in a director. I have worked with directors who had good taste in music but poor directing ability, good directing skills but poor taste in music, and good taste in music and directing skills but poor people skills (my college director was excessively perky). Your directing skills are solid. You make rehearsal fun. And I like your music choices. Your approach to working through difficult passages gels really well with my learning style. I quickly understand what you want and produce it. Others might have different preferences for their directors but, for me, you were a perfect match. After spending years working with poor fits, you were such a breath of fresh air and I finally started to feel fulfilled musically. I never should have risked that. Music is such a huge part of my life and my self-care. Ruining our working relationship is one of the stupidest mistakes I have ever made. And I regret it more than you will ever know. I would gladly go back and take back all the conversations we had and put you back at arm’s length if it meant I could return to that level of musical fulfillment. I don’t think I will be able to find that match again and I don’t really have it in me to try.

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I’m Sorry

I didn’t sleep well again last night. I am so sorry for everything. I am sorry for being weird and for caring too much. I am sorry that I did not react well and easily accept any of this. I am sorry that I have struggled to let go and that my poor response made all of this harder for you. I am sorry for trying too hard and for fighting back and for falling apart. I know I made my bed. I know I made a shitload of mistakes. I am sorry for all of them. I let myself fall into this darkness. I chose to drop the torch because it seemed too heavy to carry at the time and I wanted to be alone and the best way to be left alone is to hide in a dark place. I regret that decision. The darkness is addictive. Once you taste it, your body becomes hooked and it is really hard to let it go, harder than I remembered or imagined. I promise that I will try to move past this, that I will keep trying to find my way back to the light. I am listening to Ralph Manuel’s Alleluia (on the Choral Stream) while I write this. It is hard not to be inspired to find peace when listening to that one.

This is one message I wish I could get to you because a heartfelt apology that comes from a place of genuine remorse can do so much to heal the people involved and I genuinely care about your happiness. You are a good man and I am sorry if I ever made you doubt that. I hope life treats you well and that you surround yourself with people who care and who see what an amazing person you are. We all need those people in our lives. So, go well, my friend. Perhaps we will meet again in another lifetime.

[Wow, and now they are playing Hymn to the Eternal Flame. The universe must really want me to find peace. Of course that one always makes me want to cry.]

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Dreams

I realized that I don’t dream about you or the group anymore which is odd since I still think about you a lot. I used to have a reoccurring dream about you. In the dream, I am at rehearsal in my normal spot and we are practicing. People are talking and laughing during pauses (though not to me). Then, all of a sudden the people around me start to notice me and, as they notice, they stop singing and just glare at me. More and more people join in the glaring. Eventually you notice that people aren’t paying attention. You look around and spot me and then stop rehearsal completely. You meet my eyes with a cold and angry expression and point to the door and say “Get out,” your voice dripping with hatred and contempt. A couple of the guys get up and loom at me in a threatening way as I quickly gather my stuff and walk out of the room. Once I am out of sight of the door, I hear the tension break and people go back to talking and laughing and you start rehearsal again. At this point, I would usually wake up feeling slightly panicked. I had this dream fairly regularly for months.

Then, one night the dream was different. In this new dream, I come to rehearsal during the break near the end and I sit at the back of the room watching rehearsal but not participating. At some point, you look up and spot me but you don’t seem concerned. You catch my eye and just keep going with rehearsal. At the end of rehearsal, I start to leave, but you walk over with a smile and greet me and ask me how I have been. We spend a couple of minutes catching up on what has been happening in our lives as people filter out of the room. As the last of the people leave, you ask if we can talk and I agree. We sit down in some of the empty chairs and we have a serious discussion about the things that happened to end our friendship and working relationship. We fill in the blanks for each other and clear up some of the misconceptions. We both apologize to each other and we both acknowledge the apologies and forgive and express regret about everything that happened. We both agree that it is not what we wanted to happen. After all of that has been said, you give me a hug and we promise to catch up again sometime. You tell me you hope you will see me at some of the concerts and I smile and agree to try to attend. Then we leave and part ways and the dream ends. When I awoke from this dream I felt so much peace....at least until I remembered it wasn’t real.

But, after this dream, all of the dreams stopped. It is like the dream gave me a glimpse of an alternate reality where you and I made peace. Dream Me got closure so Dream Me no longer needs to revisit the issue. So, why can’t real me find that same peace? Why does real me keep living that first nightmare filled with fear and sadness and shame? Will we ever get to the place that Dream Us reached? I don’t know. Sadly, it seems unlikely. But at least Dream Me found peace. I suppose I should be happy for her.

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All I Wanted Was To Talk To You

I’ve written so many things, analyzed so much, trying to understand. What it all boils down to, the reason I can’t let go and can’t move on is I never got the chance to talk to you. All I have wanted was to have a conversation with you, to look you in the eyes and read your expression so I could understand what was happening, so I could apologize and clear up any misunderstandings. I wanted to ask you why you made this decision. I wanted to understand so I could make peace with it. And I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted maybe twenty minutes of your time.

But you wouldn’t give me that. Our last conversation was just a regular conversation. Then you started ignoring my texts and eventually had S email me to tell me our friendship was over. She said cryptically that I had caused you a ton of emotional distress and that you had contemplated quitting the group because of me. Months later you left me a short voicemail telling me you had never dealt with “a situation like this” before. What the heck does any of that mean? A situation like what? How did I cause you emotional distress? I was kind of awkward and probably sent you more texts than I should have and overshared but that is annoying not distressing.

You left me with this mystery and shut me out so painfully and I am left feeling self- loathing for being so awkward and repulsive that I ruined a good friendship, guilt and remorse for somehow inadvertently causing you distress, intense grief, and fear that something like this will happen again with other people. We would likely have avoided a lot of this mess with a simple twenty minute conversation, a simple explanation.

But, you left me behind like the dust from your shoes. Nobody explain things to dust. Nobody says goodbye to it or considers its feelings. You just brush it off and move on. I have been brushed off and I will either blow away with the next breeze or wash away with the next rain and no one will even remember I was ever here.

———————-

I Miss Singing

I miss going to choir rehearsals and enjoying the relaxed camaraderie. I miss the jokes and the stories. I miss how it feels when you hit the notes just right and the sound sort of shimmers. I miss the feeling I would get when I could blend perfectly with the singer next to me and our voices would just fold together like we were one voice. I miss leaning into a harmony and feeling the chord stack and line up and feeling my note fit like a puzzle piece locking into the structure. I miss the feeling of accomplishment when I could hold my own on a tricky rhythmic part or in a dissonant chord. I miss getting lost in the line and the way the music could draw you in during a performance and the intense focus on the director and the pull of the tempo and the satisfaction of feeling that everyone is staying together. I miss the ringing sound that is left after the last chord of a song. I miss that moment of hushed silence right after a song ends when the audience is still processing what they heard and they are incredibly still and alert and straining with their ears and minds to record that last sound in their memories. I miss the feeling of relief when the tension breaks and they relax and clap. I miss the way I could get lost and leave the real world and all of its worries and sad stories behind, even if it was just for a couple of hours. I miss singing. My heart aches for it.

Submitted January 03, 2019 at 04:27AM by Thedaythemusicdied37 http://bit.ly/2F2GTCz