The inversion has been bad this year. Today thank goodness the sky is blue. I think a white hazy sky is very depressing. All my kids are at school today. AnnaKate tried for one more sick day but I got her to go to school, just an hour late.
Let's go back in time to January of 2010 to continue with my story. Leilani, my friend who asked me to sing ends up asking me to sing 2 songs, one in the middle and one at the end of the meeting. I of course say yes because I have decided to be a grown up and not be held back by fear any longer. She also asks her daughter's guitar teacher Danny to accompany me for these 2 songs. He kindly agrees to do it. He came over to my house to practice. I put my twins down for their 3 hour nap thinking we can practice uninterrupted. Well, they had something else in mind. Sarah pooped in her diaper, took it off in her crib and made a mess. I rush around cleaning that up. Danny is waiting. Gwenyth poops in her diaper, comes into the kitchen where Danny is, takes her diaper off and ditches it on the floor in front of him then runs off. Danny politely lets me know that my daughter left her diaper on the floor. I tried one more time to get them to nap. They want nothing to do with sleep. My friend Leilani is kind enough to let them come play. Danny and I practice. I'm nervous and self conscious. I've never sung with my new voice in front of anyone. He is relaxed and awesome on the guitar. I'm so glad he is so easy going and respectful. We practice for an hour and half or so. It was so fun. I loved it. It was sometime after that first practice that I pulled my guitar out of the basement. I hadn't touched it in over 4 years. I tried to play it. I could remember a thing. Not even one chord would come back to me. I had taught myself to play a little years earlier and even taken lessons for a few months but that's another story I'll tell later. I took it in to get re-strung and hoped I'd remember the little I knew. The week before the solo I'm so scared I get butterflies in my stomach every time I think about it, which ends up being all day. Butterflies all day leads to nausea. I didn't know that before this. I can't eat. I lose 5 pounds.
Finally the day of the solo comes. I force food down all day. That night I go to the meeting. I get up to sing, I start singing, I don't know what to do with my hands, I feel completely awkward. I look up at the ladies in my ward but then I see some of them tearing up (the words of the song are touching) which makes me want to cry so I stare at the wall or my neighbor that looks bored. I fold my arms and feel so awkward. My heart is pounding so hard I can hardly breath. I'm hitting all the notes except for a few squeaky cracks. Over all I sound fine. I can't even look at my close friends who know how scared I am, if I do I might totally loose it. The song ends. I sit back down beside my mom who came to hear me. I feel sick and nervous the rest of the meeting. The speakers were really good so I did my best to pay attention. Then I have to get up and sing again. I think I sing this song better than the first but my heart is still pounding so hard. Afterwards lots of ladies are so nice and tell me I sounded great and all that nice reassuring stuff. I'm completely grateful for every kind word. I was still feeling so uncomfortable and felt surprisingly hurt by the friends who didn't say anything to me afterward. That of course makes me assume they thought it stunk. I just felt really insecure so I'm sure they didn't think it stunk I was just freaked out. The week following the solo every time I even think of it or drive past the church or somebody brings it up, waves of nausea roll over me. I lose 5 more pounds. Remember, at this point God had already dropped the bomb on me. (see the last 2 posts. I'd put a link here if I knew how) I knew this wasn't the end but the beginning and I was going to be singing for more than 30 sweet women in my ward. Yes, singing a solo was scary but the real reason I was so scared is that I had an idea of what was coming and what I needed to prepare for.
I really wanted to stop feeling sick and be able to eat. I'm not a psychologist but I took some classes in college. I think because I was so scared during both songs and never relaxed my brain and body were stuck in associating that experience with fear and panic. I wanted to reprogram my brain and get it out of panic mode. I knew I needed to sing again in front someone and sing until I was out of panic mode . You know, just sing until I relaxed a bit and realized singing a solo is not going to result in my death. So my mom stopped by for something and I asked her to sit down with me and let me sing for her till I was no longer scared. She kindly did sit and listen. Thanks mom, it did the trick.
So now the solo is over with and I'm thinking, what do I do now? I pick up my guitar from the guitar shop and run into my old guitar teacher. I feel like I should take guitar lesson's but I don't feel like I should take from him. He's great and everything I just feel like I should take from Danny. I don't want to take guitar lessons so that's a minor problem. I've tried to learn the guitar before. It's hard. It hurts your fingers and gives me a backache, hand ache, arm ache, neck ache. Plus I'd just hide in my room and play it, it's not like I wanted to play it for anyone to hear. There is a repeating theme here isn't there. I feel like I should do something. I don't want to. I do it anyway...................learning new things is hard and makes me feel stupid but its the only way to grow.
I bring my guitar home and miraculously remember 3 whole chords. C, D, G. At the time I was feeling really happy and relaxed. I sat down on my bed and strummed these 3 chords. I wondered. "could I write a song?" I had been wondering this for weeks now. I just went between these 3 chords over and over and could hear in my head a melody that could go with it. Then I just started singing what I was thinking about at the time.
"No one can tell you but I think I'm gonna try. You'll hear the words but you'll think they don't apply. I don't mean to scare you but you might think you're gonna die.
There's things about your body that you might really love. There gonna get worn out and stretched, there goes your youth. You might not believe me but my friends know I tell the truth.
I don't know why I'm trying to warn you, you won't believe me anyway but no one ever told me that for joy like this, you pay.
It wouldn't have done any good if I would have really known. It would have just got in the way.
So never mind what I say. You go on home, put the birth control away, it's been worth all the pain I've had to pay."
After I wrote it I thought "Well that was fun. It's just a for fun silly song but the process was easy and fun and made me laugh. Maybe I could actually write a good song?" And that's when the inside of my brain started to change forever. I would talk to myself in rhyme all day. I would fall asleep rhyming. I would be singing my made up songs in my dreams. I turned into an insomniac. I'd lie awake for hours thinking and be somewhere between sleep and awake. It was weird. I got a sinus infection that lasted 6 months. I'm sure it's because I never slept. 5 days a week I'd do vocal exercises. I started to learn to play simple songs on my guitar. I started to write songs. They weren't that great but the process was such a fun challenge. I loved making up melodies and fitting in the words. I didn't tell my husband I was writing songs. I just wanted to enjoy the process and not worry if the songs were good. I didn't want to worry if they sounded stupid to other people. If I thought about singing them for even my husband it would kill any creativity I had going. So for the time I was just in my own happy world.
Back to the Present. I better go figure out what to make for dinner. Do I really have to cook again?
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