What Makes Your Heart Sing

If someone had told me fifteen years ago I’d be sitting in a voice lesson struggling to get notes out and being off pitch, I would have laughed out loud. The shear cockiness of my fifteen year old self would shirk off the potential that I wouldn’t be good at something. It would say, “that will never happen” and yet here we are.

P.O.T.S. has challenged my ability to sing. I won’t go so far as to say it’s taken it away but there was certainly a time when I thought it might. When I sing, my whole body feels awful. I start to feel faint and my breathing gets weird. Notes that used to flow effortlessly through me suddenly take so much more time and energy to get out. On one hand, I need to try harder. On the other, I need to stop trying so hard.

This oscillation between the two states is confusing even for me. It feels as though someone is playing tug of war with my heart. It pulls one way and I feel my heart close up, protecting and defending itself from what? I’m not sure. I feel tugged in the other direction and sudden my heart is wide open and free and for a split second it feels amazing. But then I feel vulnerable and afraid and I run right back to the other side.

This back and forth is what has done a number on me mentally and emotionally. Outside of the physical aspects of my diagnosis, the thing that becomes most challenging is striking the perfect balance of releasing control and trusting in the outcome. It’s the act of trusting in myself so fully that every single thing that occurs to me is working in my favor.

The thing is, a few days ago I would have said the act of writing that sentence makes me feel like the other shoe is about to drop. It would feel as though me saying it’s all going to work out is like me provoking the universe in order to be shown that it can’t. But today as I write this, I’m not waiting for the ground to fall out from underneath me. I trust it’s going to work out and it will because if there’s one thing I believe in fully, it’s myself.

This isn’t a lesson I learned over night but it’s certainly a lesson I learned through singing. I remember this moment a few weeks back where I attempted to sing a song I used to be able to sing in my sleep. After giving it my all I felt the familiar wave of uncertainty course through me followed by the immediate need to sit down. The first thing I thought to myself was “I can’t do this.” The second thing I thought was “I can’t not sing.” The fear that struck my body was immediate, so immediate that I was moved to tears. Singing is not just a talent that I use for other people. It’s the core of who I am because there is nothing more familiar to me than my own voice. It’s how I comforted myself as a kid, it’s how I processed emotions  in my teen years. It’s how I express in my day to day. If I lose my voice, I lose the entirety of me.

I sat in this fear for a while. I won’t lie to you and say I bounced right back because I didn’t. I sat perfectly still in complete fear. I remember thinking “What am I going to do? No no this can’t be happening. I can’t keep fighting every day if I can’t do the one thing I love.” And that’s where it clicked for me. Singing is the one thing I love more than anything in this world because it is the one thing I do to show love for myself. When I was younger, I sang for others. I was boastful and prideful because I was immature. I wanted others to see that I was good, probably even great at something. But over the years, my relationship with my voice evolved. It moved from being used to show off to others to being used to connect with my own heart and soul. And if I couldn’t do that anymore, what was I going to do?

The answer that I found after much, much crying and a good old fashioned pity party was that I simply wouldn’t let it happen. I refused and still refuse to let my voice go. The easier choice would be to let it drift away, fall to the wayside like all the others things I’ve stopped doing because of this diagnosis. But the thing is, I won’t let that happen because to do that would actually break my own heart to a degree that it wouldn’t recover. So I simply decided I will heal it. I believe in myself so fully that I have given myself no other choice. There is simply no other outcome for me than to have my voice back.

There are many things I have learned on the mental and emotional side of this healing journey. But perhaps the most significant one today is that the power of believing in myself is something I can choose to do or be forced to do. I have a laundry list of times that I’ve been forced to choose myself. It has been painful and annoying and so damn frustrating. So this time I decided to choose myself and spare me the mental anguish.  Because if there’s one thing I know for sure: I can and I will because I have before and I will again.