She Does Vocal Lessons

There once was a girl who nobody knew.

She was usually too broken to be looked at and considered with the term “beautiful”. She was too haunting and would send people flying away in an instant without even having to try. In fact, she wished she could stop that from being the way it was. She wished there was an off-switch, or that even one person out there could gather up the courage to approach her and make her feel welcome to earth, a gesture that would remind her she was born here like everybody else. She didn’t want to be outcasted anymore.

Why, she was tired of being cast aside. Ignored. On the sidelines rather than in the game.

She wanted someone to notice the dark color on her nails, maybe show some curiosity about where she got them done or how much they cost. She wanted someone to compliment her vivid colored blouse that she purposely wore so that she’d stand out a little bit more than normal, and she wanted her plan to be put in motion rather than keep backfiring over and over again. She wanted someone to praise her for going out of her comfort zone and wearing a skirt that dangled above her knee instead of below because that meant that someone supported her stepping up and being brave for herself as she deserved. She wanted the “beauty is pain” laugh-y conversation before she took off her scarlet heels and she wanted tips on how to do her make up because nobody ever taught her while she was growing up.

She wanted her smile to be real, to be genuine, to reflect happiness from her heart and not the shattering in it she was getting used to. She knew that she deserved better, but the sadness she held was the only companion she ever had, and she was too afraid of change.

So back up against the wall, she didn’t move a muscle. She admired a young woman from a distance who had the guts to be wild and free, and who absolutely owned the dance floor in the center of the dimming building every Friday night. She loved that this lady couldn’t be controlled, that she lived in a world of her own, and she created a beauty queen in herself that she demanded other people to respect. No, she didn’t admire the girl out of longing for a relationship as lovely as she was, and she didn’t crave for her in the form of a friendship either. She loved her because she knew in another dimension she herself would be exactly her --carefree, just like that.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” she whispered to herself discreetly, “if one day you were more than the blood that flowed through your veins and the rock that formed in your throat? Wouldn’t it be nice if the highlight of your year was more than the smell of rain outside in the spring? Wouldn’t it be nice if you stopped searching for yourself in other people and you found where you belonged for you and for nobody else” and then she laughed because she didn’t think it sounded realistic. She was too beyond the time it took to get there, too far behind to catch up to a deadline that never existed, and that she put into her own mind, branded there in the center of her forehead.

She lived in her missed opportunities. Pitying herself, she lived in the past experiences that she viewed to be tugging her back into days that aren’t here anymore. She dwelled on the times that had drained down with a swirl in her shower a long, long time ago when the sun would rise every single day begging her to start her journey forwards and not backwards. Little did she know, she made herself nameless, placing herself in the same spot every moment she got like she were waiting at a bus stop that would encircle her in not passengers, but pixie dust and magic that would grip onto her with a motivation to reach her dreams, when the reality is, that’s not at all how life works. That’s something she had to chase all by herself.

And on one random, unexpected Friday evening, when she would usually head to a club and build up not enough courage to dance, she realized that truth, and she stayed in instead. It’s not that she began to go in deep search for fame, for glory, and for riches, but what she did seek is her own happiness and truth. Surrounded in her own loneliness and a change of scenery, she figured it out. She got to the bottom of it. In the quiet and peace, she lost every fragment of her worries and she stopped from then on, looking in what’s always been the wrong place. She held a captivating hopefulness she’s never held before.

It was a world right at her fingertips. Vocal was its name. There, resources waited eagerly for her, well-prepared to show her how to create a new life for herself using nothing but a keyboard. It honored her oh-so-dearly because it gave her heart a place to speak, and a platform to pour herself out, both her darkness and her light. It handed her challenges that would guide her in reflection, and that would, with evenly spaced footsteps, take her to a destination with the better thoughts stored in her head that she assumed she lost during her childhood of naivety or to a world of fiction where she had the chance to escape if need be. She learned to be grateful, glad, gorgeous and most importantly, her amazing imperfect self that nobody else could ever be.

A wide range of communities cuddled her. “Blush” and “viva” taught her to be the woman she thought she couldn’t be and it reminded her that there were experiences she’s faced that other people have to, and that she was never alone. “Beat” widened her range with music, and got her fantasizing about celebrities that made her heart skip a beat when she was still a teenager. “Criminal” and “horror” got her caught up in stories that would unregrettably give her nightmares, prodding at the part of her that missed the stories told around the campfire with her very best friends that went their separate ways. “Confessions” threw her back into the days when gossip was an everyday thing that she couldn’t survive without, “humans” told her that a lovely family life wasn’t necessarily impossible for her if that’s what she would eventually want for herself and “pride” helped her be proud of the person she was.

Vocal opened up a world to her. Home wasn’t a place with a roof above and a floor below. It was a page with top stories that she couldn’t help but be immersed in with everything she was. While people cheered on and supported her, she also applauded for the accomplishments and spotlight of Justin Douglas Lee, Casey Promise Thompson, Poems by Kiesha, Call Me Les, and many more gaining an audience every single day, and of course, cried over the news of Tom Bradbury and awed over his work so deeply and thoroughly. As a citizen here, she felt everything for all sorts of people and all sorts of connections she never developed anywhere else.

Once she didn’t thrive and now she did, in her own way. Finally, she had a voice.