I played piano for the first time in a long time this early February morning.
That might seem insignificant, but for me, it carries a lot of weight. On the piano, I can play some others’ works like Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years,” the occasional Evanescence tune, or even any music my piano professor gives me. But, what I love more than anything, is to play my own music. Nothing, no symphony, ballad, or little technical exercise will ever compare to the feeling of creating my own music. To the feeling of living my own song. When I play piano, when I really play, I feel as if some unknown force takes a hold of me and a voice in my hands sings out a piece of my soul with each keystroke. It doesn’t matter if I miss a note here or there; that’s kind of like life. My soul song cries out in joy, in pain, in grief, in passion, in love; every feeling I’ve ever felt manifests in my song, and whenever I feel enough to play it, it brings me to a place where I feel more whole than anywhere else.
For a long time, I struggled with accepting who I was. I never knew whose voice to believe; the crushing voice of silence that told me over and over again to be someone I wasn’t, or the tiny voice that grew louder every day telling me to be who I really am. Eventually, my real voice won out, but silence’s threat is always there. Always whispering doubt into my every decision, every hope, every feeling. Yet, music helps me through. In a lot of ways, it’s a third voice; one whose presence turns silence mute. When I play my song, it brings me back to myself. My stream of consciousness is written all over the piano keys. While, even now, some things are still too scary or too painful to think about, many of the labels I used to think applied to me don’t seem to fit all too well anymore; or, at least, they don’t seem to fit in the same way as I was told they had to. In the end, though, my piano song will change with every new moment because it changes every time I do. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write it down, because in this effervescent journey we call life, nothing ever feels like it’s finished. Silence is always creeping, but to every deafening question it poses, there is always an answer. To me, it seems as if I’ll always be living through a constant series of unanswered questions, but my curiosity never ceases to be insatiable.