This Little Thing: The Story of a Song and a Dream

The list of reasons I would fail was long and never far from conversations. Backhanded condemnations like �Do you really think you�re talented enough?� and �Why can�t you write different songs, more like the ones on the radio?� came at me like machine gun fire. �It isn�t a real job� or �There�s no future in it,� uttered casually and sideways from forked tongues. �You�re not being realistic� was tossed my way more than once.

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I didn�t have any contacts. I didn�t know what I was doing. I had to think about having a family. I had to think about my future.

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Criticisms flowed freely and with complete certainty and condescension, little daggers of faithlessness from the people who had no expertise or understanding of what I was endeavoring to do. People who had always taken the easy and safe road. People I should�ve been able to turn to for unconditional support and love.

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It didn�t matter that I didn�t want children, or that I was never going to be happy in an office, or that I was naturally musically gifted. Or that, God forbid, I wanted to pursue my passion. It didn�t matter what I wanted or who I was. What mattered was what THEY thought I should be.

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I felt betrayed. My whole life, �family stands together� was shoved down my throat, a manipulative mantra meant to make all the wrong in our house appear right. This bogus idea that no matter what, you could depend on your family to be there to support you.

Here they were, the people who were supposed to stand behind me through the good and the bad, standing against me. These people who I had looked up to, who I had dreamed of emulating, who I had rearranged parts of myself for in hopes of finally gaining some bit of acceptance, were the very ones driving the knives deep.

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I was the youngest child from a very conservative family. My brothers and sisters were all married with children. They all had respectable Monday-Friday jobs. They all followed the unwritten rules of normalcy. Why couldn�t I be more like them? Shunning tradition and walking away from corporate America to be an artist? It just wasn�t done.

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For years, I believed them. I believed they had a right to direct my life. I, yearning so desperately to find the slightest modicum of approval from the people who were supposed to love and support me unconditionally, pushed my dreams of life on the stage further and further away.

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But despite what seemed like their best efforts, they just could not kill it. That dream would not go down without a fight, and neither would I. In a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, that little dream and I fled across the country and out of reach of the toxicity poisoning us.�

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And here I was, in Los Angeles. It was midnight by the time I got home. The apartment was empty. My boyfriend was out of town on a business trip. Aside from my racing breath and heart, everything was quiet and still, as if all the air had been sucked out of the rooms to fill my lungs, which were heaving from excitement.

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I briefly looked around. Everything seemed different. Not just different, but new. And wonderful. For a moment, I considered taking a few minutes to stop to savor it. But I had just returned from several hours at the recording studio, the first track of my first-ever self-penned and professionally recorded song on the CD in my trembling hand. Nothing else was as important to me at that moment than hearing my song, my �child,� pour forth from a real sound system. The neighbors would completely understand me blaring a song in the middle of the night, right?

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I went to my bedroom, turned on the stereo (which my boyfriend had thoughtfully outfitted with top-of-the-line speakers perfect for a budding musician), popped the CD into the drawer, pushed play, and waited. I took a deep breath in and held it. And then there they were, the first tinkling notes of the piano.

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Every hair on my body stood tall as a spasm shot up the length of my spine, tingling my scalp and causing a slight shiver through my back. It was like a burst of accumulated excitement and tension and anticipation bubbling up from the soles of my feet and escaping out the top of my head. I felt electrified as if I would give off shocks if anyone were to touch me.

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For the next three and a half minutes, I was transfixed, listening to myself. The soft orchestration of instruments ebbed and flowed underneath a chorus of my voices, each piece building upon and supporting the other and creating a disembodied guardian whispering words of strength. Encouragement of being your own knight in shining armor, of facing and embracing the ugly and glorious beauty of reality, poured forth from the speakers.

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�if you can push forward

and if you can be strong

you�ll understand the beauty of this little thing called life

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and if you open up your eyes

and if you keep on moving

you will find your place in this little thing called life

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Melodies, harmonies, and sentiments weaved in and out, a tapestry of sound that resonated like a reckoning in my heart. I felt weightless, shapeless, unable to tell where my body ended and the music began. It was exhilarating. Disorienting. Transformative. Magical.

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My legs, overwhelmed by the kinetic energy sprinting through my body, buckled slightly. I sat on the bed. I could feel my heart palpitating as I tried to get a handle on the pulsing life force that had taken over my body. So many emotions tore around my cells, screaming at them to be awake, alive. Shaking the dream from its slumber and forcing us to both be present. To embrace this creation, my creation, our creation.

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And suddenly I was crying. Proper fat tears streamed down my face, arriving unbidden and almost uncontrollable, but welcome. I brushed my cheeks and felt their warmth and wetness, their show of acceptance of this precious and fragile and long-awaited moment.

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The song ended; I sat on the edge of the bed, my body vibrating with so much happiness I was practically levitating.

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It had taken many years to get here, but I had finally arrived at that blissful moment of clarity and self-acceptance.

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For years, I had been the trained monkey with the cymbals called upon to entertain everyone. My father would yell out songs for me to perform, and I, the dutiful daughter, would oblige, sitting down at the piano and belting out some show tune while inwardly seething at being treated like nothing more than a circus act. Because in the comfort of our home, when it was all fantasy, my being a performer was okay. It was safe. It was even applauded. Until I took my talents beyond the front door.� Then it was no longer okay.

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But I was in New York City on 9/11. I saw thousands of dreams crumble in an instant. And on that day, something inside me split open, and from the chasm emerged a feeling I�d hidden away for over a decade, afraid to feel it, afraid to believe in it.

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Hope.

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Hope poured out and enveloped me in a warm cocoon. It whispered to me. It cradled me. It soothed me. It reminded me that life was for living. And it told me it was time to get on with that living.

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Now, two years later, I found myself alone in my apartment at midnight, listening to the first single of my first CD, crying the purest tears of joy, shaking with excitement, and inviting hope back into my life. With that song, at that moment, the clouds cleared, the dream awakened. I felt utterly alive and strong. I felt content in my skin. I felt like I mattered.

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I didn�t care if anyone else would like what I�d done or if they approved. I didn�t care whether I�d written a hit or a dud. All that mattered was that I had done it. And, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was in the right place, on the right path. I believed in something. I believed in me. My forbidden dream, that little thing that had tugged at my sleeve and pushed me on despite the darkness and the disapproval, had finally become my legitimate reality.

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