The (Long) Story that Sticks

I was talking with a friend yesterday about singing.  It's one of those things that I know I need to do.  It's also the absolute scariest thing for me to do. Singing does create the most exhilarating feelings.  It's also the most horrifying thing I can think of doing whilst others are present.   It's hard to convey the depth of the fears that I hold around singing.  The story I hold of the fear it brings up has grown to be ridiculously large.  Perhaps by sharing the story, I can begin to grow beyond it....I hope.

I sang a lot as a child.  I would set up my wooden toy box as a stage.  I would perform dramatic concerts for audiences filled with my beloved stuffed animals.  My treasured microphone could be tuned to project my voice over the radio, and was truly the coolest toy a kid could ever hope for.   I always wanted to be a singer.  I couldn't begin to count how many sleepovers consisted of long days and late nights performing the hits of ABBA and Grease.  As I entered high school, I began singing for school events such as Homecoming coronations and Prom.  I loved it.  It was scary, but thrilling.  Sometimes a bit of fear would prevent the performances from being as good as I may have hoped, but it was manageable.  (The one exception was when I sang horrendously at my high school graduation, but I contribute the failure of that performance largely to the fact that I'd been crying for hours beforehand and continued to cry throughout the song).

Then came college.  I didn't audition for band or choir when I first started college because I just didn't think I'd be good enough to compete at that level.  I'd come from a very small town with a small talent pool.  I figured that being good back home had little meaning in the larger world.  After I had Hannah and went back to school at the age of 21, I decided to major in Music.  I began taking voice lessons, which also meant I had to sing for student recitals and masterclasses.  Masterclasses were hellacious.  As students, we would sing a piece in front of all of our peers as well as the entire vocal faculty.  Following the performance, we would be critiqued by each of the faculty members while still standing on stage in front of the audience of our peers.  The intention was that we'd all have the benefit of learning from our peers mistakes as well as from our own.  Seriously??  This was the beginning of a big dropping point for me.  For one thing, I had lost much of my musical confidence being, as they say, the small fish in big waters.  Being a young single mom had somehow taken a toll on my confidence, as well.

These recitals and masterclasses all run together for me.  They are all one long lump of embarrassment, disappointment, failure.  The physical reaction to the fear I'd have as I prepared to perform and as I attempted to perform, was astounding.  My arms would go numb up to my elbows.  My head would spin.  I wouldn't feel connected to my body.  I couldn't catch my breath, nor could I find my voice.  The sound that came from my body was something I was unfamiliar with.  And it was something I hated.  It was weak.  It shook.  It was quiet and off-tune.  Despite all the "relaxation" and "visualization" techniques that my voice teacher would provide me with, the same thing would happen each time.  The performance was always followed by irrelevant and painful critiques of my failed performances.  These critiques were, of course, witnessed by a large portion of the students in the music department.  Humiliation.  Following each performance, I'd sob for hours.  The frustration was so intense and seemed so insurmountable.  I tried over and over again, but it didn't get any better.  The physical reaction to other performances that I'd attempt were the same as the ones I experienced while in college.  The fear grew larger and larger.  The fear of failure in front of an audience wasn't just a fear created in the back of my mind.  It was something that I'd experienced a multitude of times.  This same fear still strikes me, a full 12 years following my college graduation, every time I sing in front of almost anyone.

There have, thankfully, been a more and more exceptions as the years have passed.  The two times I sang for weddings since college, I've taken beta blockers.  They are fabulous little pills intended for those with high blood pressure.  They are also, however, prescribed for those of us who experience physical performance anxiety.  They work wonders.  They erase all the physical symptoms of fear, but they do not erase the fear itself.  The emotion of fear is still just as intense.  The taste of failure is still ever present.  And without beta blockers, still after all of these years, the fear is strong enough to make me lose my breath and make my voice quiver even when I sing in supportive groups of friends.

So, when people say, "Why don't you just sing??!!"  This is what I can't adequately explain.  I'm so freaking scared that it's paralyzing.  And yet, I know I need to get past this.  And the only way to work through the fear, is to face it head on.  To stop letting it stand on me.  To rise up and chase it.  I know I can't waste any more years preparing myself for this battle.  Somehow, I just have to find the strength to do it.  I'm just not sure how.