December 19, 2008
09:20
dear dairy
The day before I had my audition for my school's music program, I paid five dollars to meet the accompanist and get some help working on my pieces, and he said something that had me plummet into a brief depression. He asked how old I am, and when I said, he replied that the judges would probably be easier on me if I were fresh out of high school.
I was practicing piano later, staring at this simple rendition of Happy Birthday, barely able to play it, and wondering if this is the point where I realize I am a failure.
The day of the audition, I felt like I had done the best I could, and I felt good about it, but as the week wore on, I wondered what would happen if I didn't get in. I wouldn't know how to deal with it, knowing that what I considered a good performance was not good enough.
Of course, I didn't get in. And it's worse than I imagined.
I feel completely marginalized and stupid. I feel that any hope I've ever had has been a delusion, and that if a school takes my age into consideration, then it really means I am a failure, as established by the school system. To them, I'm supposed to know what I'm doing by now, and if I don't, if I don't do well enough on my performance, that means I am simply NOT a musician. What they don't know is that I'm NOT anything else. I have nothing else to be, except for my potential. I have no life established for myself, I have no identity. Everything I have ever started has failed. I'm meaningless. And I was looking to the school for meaning, but I'm shut out, to fall back on what? My job? My career? My other hobbies and interests? All I have is pornography and videogames, sex acts and entertainment produced as a form of escape, so that I don't have to face what's really going on. I don't have a self.
I have nowhere to go. I have no self. I keep thinking of killing myself since this is the end.
I did my piano final today, and I thought about how much it doesn't seem to matter how much I practice because I always, always do poorly. I will never be happy until I succeed, but that doesn't seem possible.
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