I did a free write the other day, and I'm not mad at what I wrote.

:::

I am capable of doing hard things.

I think this to myself as I sit in Chamber Singers, intensely uncomfortable within myself. My range is gone, my breath evades me, and I watch my skill disintegrate before my eyes as I am enveloped by the sound of strangers to no one but me. 

And I think to myself: I should quit. I should call it. Maybe try the other choir. I cannot do this, I lack the skills, it is so clear I am not meant to be in this room with these people. I dread returning on Thursday.

And then I think: I've felt this before. A long time ago, yes, but I know this. I know how this goes.

It goes like this:

You are scared (suicidal). You want to sneak out (lay on the ground until you rot into one existence-nonexistence with the earth) and never return. No one will notice, you have no one in the room to miss you. You do not belong there, regardless of what anyone says.

Until you do. Until you return, and fail again, and return, and fail again, and return and someone says hello. You loan out your pencil, a piece of yourself. You return and fail until you don't, until you triumph over your toughest piece and years after still long to make its music again. You don't belong until you do.

And then you do.

And then you know, then I know, that time is both cruel and kind in equal measure, and while what goes up must come down, so too shall you rise up to the challenge.

You do not belong, that's true. Until you do.

-T