Music therapy...

February 15, 2012

Monday was a big day for me. I had my head scanned (not for anything psychological, I see a different guy for that) and then saw my radiation doc. It’s been 15 months since I got the radiation treatment, and I’ve only felt consistently worse, not better. The last MRI and follow-ups were 6 months ago, and some progress was made, but my expectations were probably too high. At the time, I was very happy to have done something proactive. That lasted only about 15 minutes, however, and then I just had to wait. I’m a fairly patient person when it makes sense to wait my turn; I’m just so fucking sick of being sick, though, and tolerance of my situation is wearing out.

But back to Monday…I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve not been terribly lucky, especially with my health, so I was prepared for bad news. Logically, feeling worse would seem to make it more likely that things are actually worse, so there’s that. It follows that I’m nervous and anxious. I’m still waiting to hear back about Disability, and that weighs on me, too. No matter how the judge sees things, I can’t work. If I don’t get this, I have no fucking idea what I’m supposed to do. I need it. Then add that I wasn’t feeling so great, coming close to falling a few times while walking around the hospital. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, and that didn’t help matters, either.

I ended up getting fairly good news. The tumor appears to be stable. It’s the same size as 6 months ago. It’s the first time that an MRI hasn’t shown growth. The doctor said that the radiation seems to have worked and that there’s only a small chance that it’d grow more going forward. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but it was better than I expected. I had this weird sensation of cautious relief, still wondering what was coming next. While the tumor’s size stabilizing is good, I still feel like crap, and I still need to get it out to see if I’ll ever feel better. The damage could be permanent or the tumor is just irritating those nerves and removing it would alleviate my symptoms—or something somewhere in-between. We can’t know for sure unless and until the tumor isn’t part of the equation.

At least as far as the subject of writing this goes, the details of my hospital visit are all prologue. I took a nap after I got home. Getting some rest and having more time to process the good news, I was more content. I still had some nervous energy, though. I figured eating would be a good move. I was hungry, so that made sense. While I was fixing my 2 Totino’s pizzas, I heard the TV in the living room. My parents were watching The Voice. There was this girl singing “Hey There, Delilah” by the Plain White T’s, but it so weird and different and bizarrely good. She sounded like Björk crossed with Yoko Ono or something, but in a more pleasant way than you’d probably imagine. It took a minute to decide if I thought she was just crazy or if it was just so different that it was necessary to give it a little longer to appreciate. Her interaction with the judges was cool, too, which sealed the deal for me.

I don’t watch The Voice. I used to watch American Idol, but stopped awhile ago. Part of it is my need to care about the contestants to enjoy such shows, and no one had really moved me for some time. Also, I only have so much energy and care to give, and I’ve needed to focus most of that on myself, not some random people I’ll probably never meet. Another big thing that factors into this is that I’m very competitive. I like to imagine how I’d do in various settings. The whole “you can do anything you set your mind to if you work hard enough” stuff stuck with me as I grew up. And I used to sing, mostly to myself, but I sang. It’s a great, creative, and expressive outlet for me. Whether it’s singing with the radio, singing something I wrote previously, or just making up a song as I go along, it fills holes that life has dug out of me. I’m not always able to feel certain emotions that correspond to a given circumstance. Sometimes I’m actively blocking them so that I don’t break down 55 times a day. Other times I just want to share part of myself with another, but I have no willing partners. And there’s when things are too much and I just require something different to distract me. My bond with music works with all of those situations.

It’s hard for me to sing now. Most of the time, nothing will come out. I literally open my mouth and try to force air out through it and nothing happens. Now and then, I may get a few notes going before my voice quits on me, but it always quits before I’m ready. I’m not saying that I’d win a Grammy, but I could carry a tune, especially singing my own songs, especially when I needed to feel something. There was a time when I’d sing myself to sleep every night. It helped me to process my life and it relaxed me. It made me physically tired. It made me happier.

So I hear this girl sing on TV, and it had an effect on me. That’s what music is supposed to do. Combine the nervous energy from everything along with the competition aspect of the show and my frustration of having so much taken from me, and a switch flipped in my head. I started pacing in the kitchen, not too unlike a fighter as he prepares to walk out to the ring. I was getting hyped up, part angry, part happy, part fed up, part hopeless, part hopeful, but all real and needing a way out. I started making up songs to myself, freestyling. I was waiting to hear back from a girl to whom I wrote on a dating site, so that was added fuel to the fire. I ended up more rapping than singing, partially because I was going too fast to keep up just singing, but, too, because my voice wouldn’t let me just sing.

I almost tried out for American Idol the first 2 seasons. I saw a sign for the show in Circle Centre Mall when I was home for spring break. It’s rare that an ad like that works on me, but it piqued my interest and I found out more about it. I wanted to go to Chicago to audition the first year, but the combination of a horrible sinus infection, tons of makeup work that was due right at the end of the semester, and not really knowing how I’d get to and around Chicago did me in. The next season had auditions in Detroit, but I had similar problems and couldn’t go. I think that if I could have gotten over the nerves, I’d have had a good shot of making it to Hollywood. I wouldn’t have been laughed out of the room, anyway. Who knows how it would have turned out if I sang in front of the judges? Especially that first season, they “only” had about 10,000 total people show up. They got double that per city they visited in season 2.

It took me awhile to finally calm down. I had to stop pacing because all of that motion and turning around so much along with that crazy energy started to get to me. I was getting woozier and I didn’t want to fall. I was able to center myself enough to finish the pizza. I ate as I watched the rest of the show just to see how I’d respond. Would it stimulate me creatively or just frustrate me? It did a little of both, but frustration won out. I was too busy with the pizza to write down the lines I’d come up with before and I’d forgotten them. I had a few good ones that I could have worked with, so I’m extra bummed.

After the show was over, I cried to myself. It wasn’t a full-on break down with tears streaming, but my eyes watered up pretty good and my face got wet enough. I crashed from everything that had gone on that day, plus I was reminded of a big thing that was taken from me. My 2 biggest outlets were physical activity and music. I’m doing OK just to get out of a chair sometimes, let alone taking a run or playing basketball. I miss the sweet pain that comes after exerting myself past my comfort level. I can still listen to music, but so much of the experience is missing. I don’t write as much because I’m usually too out of it to get into the right mindset and my voice is gone, so I can’t even sing with the radio.

It’s bad enough that I constantly have to deal with so much crazy shit that affects me in so many ways. I’ve gone through a lot in my life, and I’ve done alright most of the time. But a big part of my coping mechanism, hell, if not the whole shebang itself, it’s been pulled out from underneath me, too. Life just ain’t fair sometimes, and it’s too bad. If only I could sing about it, maybe I’d be understood better. I’d definitely be significantly more content.