The thing that’s not about the thing

kimrhodes4:

And then I flipped off everybody in the room because my heart couldn’t take any more love pouring in.

That’s the end of the story. Now I shall go back to the beginning. Which is never exactly where you think it’s going to be.

I sang like a lark as a child. You couldn’t shut me up. My mother attempted to save my immortal and possibly irreparably singed soul by putting me in choir because that was guaranteed to get me to church. I devoured any amount of homework inflicted upon me so I could earn the right to travel with my school chorus. I was a one-woman juggernaut of persistence that “By My Side” from GODSPELL had to be performed at my high school graduation. By me.

In college, I warbled cheerfully through, “If I Were a Bell” in my first vocal training class. My unamused professor gestured gracefully with one hand as he commented, “Well, you can tell she’s an actress. She LOOKED like she sounded great!”

I’m sorry, what?

So the seeds were planted that mayyyyyyybe I wasn’t the actual shit I thought I was. You know what? Humility is good. It opens the door for willingness to learn. I probably did need to be taken down a peg. But fear gets into the strangest of places, and once my voice was questioned, it started to shake.

By grad school, my body would crumple in on itself when I was asked to sing. Through a grand total of maybe thirty percent of my lung capacity, I wheezed my way through “Starting Here, Starting Now”. I so wanted to be good. I so wasn’t.  

My voice teacher thought maybe a couple of dudes pulling on my arms would help open my chest. When that failed to produce the desired support, she had me lie down and have a couple other dudes, all of whom I have known for maybe two weeks at this point, pull on my legs.

Okay. Here’s the thing. It takes some very special circumstances to turn something scary into a fear that sucks the soul from you. It takes loops and links and attachments that thread back to the real beginning.

It’s probably never ever ever a good idea to force a woman on her back and have a man force her legs open.

It may not be the first time in her life that’s happened.

I vomited violently and couldn’t sing in front of people again without shaking with vicious flashbacks. I wasn’t just “scared” to sing in front of people. It had become adhered to one of the deepest traumas of my life.

Now I’m a grownup with a lot of therapy under my belt. But some shadows don’t lift and you find out they are stains. I thought that was the case with singing until you fuckers. All of you fuckers. Louden Swain who made it look like such fun. Rob who invited me to play when he saw the longing in my eyes. Briana who conjured up so much joy it was infectious. Osric who mentored my soul and Ruth who showed me what fearlessness looked like as she launched herself into my arms.

How is it possible that something like a fandom, friends, family, strangers, wayward every one of us… how is that strong enough to heal something like me?

So I put out my arms, I wore my heart, I dropped, and you fucking dressed me in the sun.

And then I flipped off everybody in the room because my heart couldn’t take any more love pouring in.

I will never have the words to say thank you.