i wish i could sing
So I’m driving down the road on the way to Wal-Mart for a pick up order. Avoiding the traffic out front, I drove around back and parked in spot #1. I pressed #1 on my iphone parking graphic and sat back to wait. Looking up, I noticed an odd bit of graffiti I had never seen before. Across from the parking lot was a train track lined by a chain link fence and across from that was a red brick wall. I had parked in this same spot a thousand times. There had never been any graffiti on that wall before. But there it was emblazoned in black spray paint.
“I wish I could sing.”
A derelict shopping cart sat beneath the sign. The words were not in color. There was no particular artistry to it. All it said was, “I wish I could sing.” What? My mind instantly filled with questions. Who had painted THAT? Why did they wish they could sing? Where would they sing if they could sing? It was a weird thought to paint in black spray paint. It was a weird place to paint it. Facing the Wal-Mart parking lot, only us pick-up shoppers would ever see it.
It was also weird because I had had the same thought a million times over my life. Had the graffiti artist read my mind? I wanted to sing so badly I went to college to learn how to do it. I spent hundreds of hours in the practice rooms of the music building over the span of four years singing scales and operatic arias and anything else my voice teacher told me to. I wanted to sing so badly, I earned a bachelor’s degree in music education because that was the only music degree my small college offered. I wanted to sing so badly I did a senior recital and the pressure from my nerves was so awful, my college roommate said I sang the entire recital every night in my sleep for a month. When I went to concerts and heard others sing, the emotion welled up in my soul until I thought my heart would break. That was what I wanted to do more than anything. If I couldn’t sing, I didn’t want to live. I looked back up at the graffiti. Did the person who painted that feel the same as me?
After college and for the rest of my life, I looked for opportunities to sing. Many came my way. I did a solo in the National Cathedral in Washington DC. The swing choir I directed while teaching high school won first place at Disney. I sang at church for choirs and bands, I sang and I sang and I sang. I directed musicals, I participated in theatre companies and I sang. And every time I stepped up to the plate, the crushing anxiety was so bad, all I wanted was for the whole thing to be over. I sang, but I never really sang. No amount of practice or education or effort or opportunity or even talent would let me sing because of one thing—trauma.
Finding Your Dream
I can’t tell you the amount of survivors I’ve talked to who have said the same thing. “I had this dream, but my anxiety was so terrible, I gave it up.” There were dreams to sing, to act, to create, to be an artist, to be a business owner, to write, to teach, to get a degree, to be successful in a thousand different ways. In essence for the soul to...to...SING! To be what it was created to be. To sing alongside all the lovely things in life. To be encouraged to dream. To be encouraged to try, and in the trying to find out what we are best at. Perhaps losing that kind of dream to trauma has been the greatest loss of them all. Trauma says we don’t deserve anything but suffering. That our dreams aren’t worth anything. That we are not worth anything.
I wondered what kind of life the person who wrote that graffiti facing the Wal-Mart parking lot had had. I wondered what was keeping them from singing and if someday, they might find a way. I’ve grown too old to audition for theatre productions anymore or make the rounds of music row in Nashville or move to New York and try out for Broadway or live in L.A. and sing at the clubs. My age along with my physical disability has closed that door. But a more important door remains open.
I can sing through the words I write on this page and I can sing through the life I have yet to live. Healing has brought me to the place where I can sing...really sing...along with the song of life. It doesn’t matter about professional achievements anymore. I made it in time. I don’t have to wish I can sing. I’m doing it every single day. That is my hope for you as well. Sing with all your heart. You are worth it. Defy trauma, embrace joy.