Well.
This past week has been a monstrosity.
I could go into explaining the many little things that contributed to said monstrosity, but it ultimately boils down to My Body acting like a little bitch. I’ve mentioned before that My Body and the rest of me are two separate entities. My Body is demanding and high-maintenance, and it can’t take much excitement before it needs to rest – and, by God, if it needs rest we’re going to rest. There’s no question. Meanwhile, the rest of me is just trying to exist. I just want to get through life like any other human on this planet, so when My Body stomps all over that like it did all week, it can put me in a very dark place.
For example, I want to sing. I have wanted to sing my whole life. I’ve always been a singer, and my goal for college was to get some kind of vocal performance degree (classical training or musical theatre training, something like that). However, My Body doesn’t do well with deep breathing, standing for long periods of time, bright lights, or loud sounds. My Body, of course, usually wins. It really won this past week, when I had a multitude of choir rehearsals to attend in order to prepare for Saturday night’s concert. It is important to mention that I didn’t faint at all throughout that concert – which included Mozart’s 50-minute Requiem – but I did stop seeing clearly by the third movement, so I spent the rest of the piece either mouthing the words or singing meekly as I tried to see the conductor through bright spots and double vision. The point is, it’s discouraging when your body takes your biggest passion and says, “Oh yeah, veto. You can’t do that anymore.” It’s frustrating to have to sit down in the middle of your voice lessons because your body doesn’t know how to handle a singer’s breath control. It hurts to have spent nearly twenty years in love with something and then watch it pull farther and farther away from you for essentially no reason. *It’s like a damn divorce.
I had a lot of trouble writing this article. I went through four different drafts, each one sporting a different metaphor or analogy to communicate the same central idea: “I am so mad at my body right now.” None of them were bad – in fact, I quite liked comparing my body to Charles Miner from The Office; and I’m sure I’ll revisit the way The Golden Girls has impacted my life in the last three years (side note: I watch too much TV. It’s fine). I could’ve finished one of those drafts and submitted it on time and that would’ve been that, but none of those concepts seemed to say what I wanted them to. I needed a certain focus, a specific idea to properly share what I want to share with you today. Saturday afternoon, I found that focus.
It’s the trees.
Spring has sprung. (I love that saying.) But in the midst of finals, dress rehearsals, and my body being rude, I forgot how much I love this time of year. While running errands between choir rehearsal and the choir concert, I found myself in the middle of beautiful blossoms on trees and lush, green grass. The 65-degree-breeze whisked some of the fog from my frazzled brain, and I suddenly realized that not only do I love the spring, but I love the spring here. I love Iowa State. I’m sure that sounds corny, or like ISU paid me to say that and persuade the soon-to-be high school graduates to accept admission, but it’s all me. I love it here. The campus is beautiful. One of my favorite things to do is just walk around, even though that’s not always what My Body wants – my soul needs it. My first post came to me while I was walking home from the Music Hall, and that’s not an uncommon occurrence. Looking around at the trees and breathing in the fresh air is one of my favorite things in the world, and it fills me with inspiration and clarity.
My uncle used to love the phrase, “Bloom where you’re planted.” Looking at the trees that day, I thought of those words and realized that I want to bloom here. And that’s fair, isn’t it? I’ve been planted here. I’ve developed a life here – I have an apartment lined up for next semester, I got accepted into the music program as a Vocal Performance major – I have a plan. And I don’t want My Body to take that away from me. Choir is a lot. Singing a 50-minute piece is a lot, but that moment during “Sanctus” when all the ‘osana’s line up is worth it. Singing this beautiful monster-piece while standing in blindingly bright and hideously hot lights is a lot. But you know what? I did it. My Body really knocked me down and kicked me this week, but I made it through that damn concert. And I want to keep making it through these damn concerts. I want to be able to train my voice and work with my adorable genius of a voice teacher. I don’t want to get divorced; I want to stay with this thing I love – this thing that makes me feel happy and alive – even if that means I have to fight with My Body to do it.
And I want to do all of that here, among these trees and the Golden Loop and the beautiful campus art. I don’t want to uproot my life (new and fresh as it may be) to make My Body calm down. Maybe my body just needs to buck up. Because I have been planted here. Now I want to bloom.
*It maybe probably could be like a divorce. That, conceptually, is what it feels like, but I’ve never been divorced, so what do I know?
