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When you've lived with illness, you're told to move on. And, in many ways, I have. At seventeen, I was a budding perfectionist, sacrificing all of my time and energy to academia as though my self esteem depended on it. And it probably did. I had grown up being insulted in all kinds of ways because I thought differently. I was "stupid" when I couldn't tell time, "absentminded" when I couldn't catch a ball, and I "wouldn't live until eight" when steroids bloated my face. So I turned to my grades, just to prove to myself, subconsciously, that I had worth. My body and my eating habits paid the price. I was constantly snacking on chocolate. I got out of breath changing my sheets. My mother signed me up for a gym. And I joined, albeit reluctantly. I detested being out of breath. But I knew I had to. I substituted chocolate for apples. I lost about thirty pounds within that year. I liked losing too much for my own good. The more I restricted, the more I exercised.


There's a high that results from not eating. It's a similar high to the endorphins you experience when you push yourself. And I was always pushing myself. Because the high stopped me from thinking. I had too much to think about. My school was beginning to discuss the college transition. Between looking at pamphlets from NYU and Sarah Lawrence, studying for an AP, and pursuing various school clubs that would fluff up my resume, something had to go. I had been learning to play guitar. It was one of the few outlets I still had to express myself. But practicing became drudgery. So I quit. 


I had been playing for several years. I had dreams of writing music and even forming a band. When I was little, I wasn't initially interested in acting. I didn't draw. And I didn't write stories. I wrote scores. Pages and pages of scores. They had no meaning. They were important to me. Writing them was cathartic. So I kept doing it. I remember having entire notebooks filled with them. As much as I loved music, however, I was not paired up with the right teachers. I had music classes in elementary school. But I couldn't tell a quarter note any more than I could tell you a quarter from a dime. So my teacher would yell. I received the impression that I didn't have the intellect to pursue music. But I knew, somewhere, that I must like it, so I kept trying.


I tried until I graduated. I had been practicing the guitar meticulously by the time I went into ninth grade. My school required every student to play guitar. I took private lessons with this particular teacher when I heard he offered them. The thought didn't occur to me to learn from anyone else; he was the only musician I (and my parents) knew of who gave any. I learned the Pentatonic Scale and how to improvise. I didn't learn how to read music. Continuing lessons meant going to another shop and starting over. I was aggravated. But I tried for about a year. I had been playing for six years; I expected to be working on fully-fledged solos. Instead, I was learning the A scale. I played as long as I had patience. I tried to have patience with myself. But I could hear my old music teacher still calling me "stupid" for having to start over. He used to yell at me when I made mistakes. And not knowing how to read music was a mistake. 


I was a budding writer. I had become known in school for my poetry. And I was given the opportunity to organize festivals and collaborate with published poets. I had come to a crossroads where I had to decide where to devote my energy. Was I going to be a poet or a musician? I decided I would be a poet, since I was a stupid musician. So I traded my guitar for my pen. And the gym.


This is what I was blocking out of my mind when I was working out. In eleventh grade, I dropped my AP class, opening my schedule. I would have had free time to do both. But I felt burnt out and unable to go back to music without shaking the feeling that I was looking at what I was giving up. I would play guitar, but I had no emotion to give. It died in my hands. So I obsessed over exercise instead. I played games to see how little I needed to eat to get my high. I was eating eight hundred calories a day. 


One visit to an eating disorder clinic and several years later, I look back and do what I never thought I would. As a requirement for my degree, I was assigned either an art or music course. I chose the latter. I assumed I would get a basic education about specific composers. What I got was kindness and a new role model. The professor I had saw my intelligence and my talent. That little bit of kindness was enough to push me past the feelings that once stood against me. I'm trying my hand at guitar. And I'm starting from the beginning. I deserve that much.