A sadness gripped me this week, a memory. I thought of a man, a good man, and a conversation we had. Of late, I find myself asking many “what if” questions. Yet the ghost of the past replies: “They are what they are, do not blame me!” So writes Dickens, and so I hear as I am overwhelmed with grief over something that never was. I often fear it is a type of sin to dwell too much on regrets; it is a brother to resentment.
I was finishing up eighth grade and preparing for high school. I had, in a move somewhat out of character for me, taken a positive action in life rather than just let things be and applied for a specific high school rather than let myself be funneled into the high school everyone else was headed for. My band teacher didn’t want me to.
He was a good man, and band was just about the only good thing I had back then. I was terrible at it, but I loved it. It was the only place where I had a place, where I wasn’t just shit for others to avoid. In band, I knew where I came in, when to be loud or soft, and when to be silent. There were rules and expectations and it was the only time in my life interacting with my fellow students that something positive would happen.
Other than that, my life was Hell.
If I went with everyone else, I would continue band. The band teacher I loved so much was the assistant conductor there, and they actually needed me. No one knew the French Horn; after four years, I could almost make a pleasant noise on the thing.
If my application went through, though, and I went to the other high school, then they would have no French Horn and I would be ending my musical studies. I can’t remember the exact wording, just how he said to me that high school would be great, just like middle school.
I think I exploded, I probably shouted, what he didn’t understand and what I was desperate to explain: I was miserable. I hated school, and I still hate it. Memories of those wretched years still haunt me as this memory has haunted me all this week.
I gave up band and went to the different high school. I found there some happiness, some real goodness, and healing from all the hurt and pain I’d been through. I gave up the one good thing I knew in the world I was in to go to a different world, a better world.
Still, the memories are sad. Yet it was better to enter into life maimed than to go into Hell with trumpet blasts. I have felt so disconnected these last few days; I can’t think or dwell on these things while at the same time they do not leave me alone, these ghosts of things I am no more. Even trying to edit this, I can barely make myself read what I’ve written. I fear I am too emotional to express the emotion I wish I could, that terrible weight of things that never were.
Tale Told 