“I shut the door to my bedroom, sliding down the creaky brown wood onto old carpet I usually wouldn’t have wanted to touch. Today, however, there was no time to be particular. Today, and every day for as long as I could remember, I just needed a place to cry.
Another day living in the hell of addiction.
I couldn’t remember lighter days. I knew they existed, but I couldn’t remember the way they tasted or smelled–the way they apparently laughed around you like a sweet breeze crossing a clearing full of daisies. All of my memories seemed to include this cage–this dark, ugly, prison of a cage.
When ‘the blackness’ would fall, there were very few things that could pull me out of it, especially since I usually retreated into isolation, shutting myself off from the rest of the world with its laughter and sunshine. In fact, very few people even knew I was battling depression or struggling with an eating disorder that choked precious moments from my life.
I wiped my nose on my sleeve, pulled myself up from the floor, and slowly walked over to my violin case. This was the instrument that had journeyed with me through it all–the highs and lows, the success and the failure. It had been played the same time I was learning arithmetic, and practiced alongside my first attempts to drive a car. It had been dragged out to entertain family every Christmas, and used to make breathtaking, angelic masterpieces come to life. I pulled out the German-made wood and bow and placed it under my wet chin, drenched in tears.
The deep inside of me began to play.
It was a private song from a desperate soul. It was a song of longing and a song of truth. It was as if my fingers knew how to touch the strings and actually give sound to the crying of my heart. I played, sang, and wept. I wept, sang, and played. And with every note, with every breath, with every sound, the iron-clad drawbridge of my heart began to slowly crank down.
Hope had appeared somehow, ever so small. It was faint and it was fragile, but it was there. The more I sang, the more determined I became.
Yes, the wind had come to destroy. Yes, the storm had taken me out more times than I cared to remember. And, yes, the rain continued to flashflood my soul. But no matter how the hurricanes of life had fought and raged, I knew one thing.
If I was still there, it was for a reason.
And I was and am… still here.”
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