To be fair, my child self had a point. The songs I wrote didn't make any sense. They were about the stupid things I wanted, like finally declaring my love for my second grade boyfriend after my parents told me I was too young to be dating anyone. Or working in the concession stand at a baseball game instead of watching it (this is while my dad coached baseball; I got bored pretty easily). I thought I was going to be the next Hannah Montana or Billy Joel's hype man. It was a dream that was my own and no one else's to crush.
The TLDR: the worse I got bullied in elementary and middle school for things other than songwriting, the more certain I was that I could not write a song good enough for people to hear.
To this day, I am the most visibly jealous and bitter toward people that can do things that my childhood self would get made fun of for. For example, I don't run. I have always looked like I was limping when I ran, and I could never do it very fast or very long. Up until eighth grade, I never broke a 10 minute mile. A group of people I used to have resentment for: cross country runners. Many of them had bodies very different than mine, and they seemed to all have endurance to last through many races. I felt gross when I ran.
A less extreme example is my attitudes regarding video games. I get motion sickness when playing video games, and I didn't have a game console growing up, so naturally, I'm not very good at them. I was always jealous of my brother and his friends, or my guy friends that played video games. They would be breaking records in Mario Kart when I have never finished beyond last place in Super Smash Bros. I felt gross when playing video games.
What really ground my gears for a long time–you guessed it: young songwriters. Kids would call me weird for singing wherever I went. When I was in middle school, a girl tried pressuring me into singing a song in front of other kids at a sporting event just to see what this kid with undiagnosed ASD would do. The one time I tried singing a song for a friend I made in middle school, she stayed loyal to her clique of mean kids that wouldn't let me sit with them at lunch time (which I don't blame her for, middle school is hard enough). So if someone else was getting lauded for their songwriting skills, I was really upset. As the title of this post says: I still feel gross when I write songs.
These weren't just any songwriters. These would be the kids going viral on YouTube, hearing their songs on the radio, or having their songs sung by professionals–I'm looking at you Jacob Collier. Rooms full of people cheering for them and people adoring them as they sang at the next open mic. They would get the love and attention from the cool theatre kids at school, and they would be praised for being their own person and having their own thoughts. And worst of all, when people would talk shit about them...they didn't care.
Now I know better. I need to grow the hell up. I know things don't just come naturally for most people. I know that these people probably have their own insecurities. I know that for many people, especially the composers alongside me at Luther, writing music was their personal outlet for their inner dialogue. I've grown to admire the misunderstood, the innovative, the growing, and the curious composers. But even after I graduated with a music degree where I had composition assignments for my music theory classes, I am still working through the pain being unfairly judged for things I wasn't good at yet.
The first and last time I ran a 5K was when I was 17. I still get last in Mario Kart. And, other than for class, I rarely finish the songs I write.
Except for two.
There is only one person other than me who has listened to the full version of both of these songs. When we first met, he listened to a tune I had made up on my guitar. I said "I'm probably not gonna do anything with it. Should I?" Without hesitation, he said "FINISH IT. PLEASE." And I did.
That was my junior year of college. He is now one of my best friends, and I knew he would still love me even if my songs were shit. He knew how personal it got when I would write. When I finished my second song, he was the first person I told. He sent me this text after he got my recording:
I don't think he was saying that just because he loves me. I think it means I'm getting better. I've learned over the last few years at college is that you're going to be bad at something. And sometimes, that something is important enough to you that you have to keep doing it. Even if you're bad at it. I'm not the next Lin-Manuel Miranda (although my mom thinks I might be, love you KT). Hell, Billie Eilish is a year younger than me and has an Oscar for her music. But...I think I'm ready to try feeling the growing pains again. And, because they were my best friends in college, I know now that the truly cool kids will understand what 9-year-old Abs was trying to say.
