Broken Strings

There isn’t a day where I don’t stare at my violin and remember the symphonies I dreamt of playing. My fingers wish to play the strings as gracefully as my youth allowed but time and depression has taken my motivation. You see...I wasn’t always this tape of self loathing, I used to have dreams and passion. But something, something changed that spring. 

I told my mother about the competition. I asked her to drive me to the institute so I could enter. It’s a free ride scholarship, I’d be paying nothing and I’d get to study at the best school in the country. But of course, that wasn’t what occurred. No. No instead, mother told me “that stupid violin won’t get you anywhere.” No man could convince her otherwise. Until the money started pouring in. They’d send me check after check. Money I never saw because mother needed a new house. 

It’s sad really. To think that I was once considered the best of the best. People used to harass me on the street if they saw me toting around my violin case. Of course, mother liked the attention. They’d ask her what’s it like raising a genius. She’d smile that fake smile and pull me under her arm. “Very noisy,” she’d joke ...like I played at home. 

No, see, me and my violin we’d only play our music at school. I’m the rehearsal rooms. My sorrow of losing my father, a man I never knew would pour out into my violin. That wooden instrument saw my pain in ways that no one would even imagine. That tiny violin wasn’t prepared for any of my pain. I smashed it. Broke the sensitive instrument into tiny little pieces and I paused. Mother would be so upset ...but who cares. 

She just bought me another and I smashed it as well. One after another all smashed into pieces until finally we get to the one that sits before me now. This one ...this one was different. I couldn’t bring myself to disturb the intricacies of the wooden structure. So instead in the case it remained. 

Untouched. 

Mother ruined my passion, stole it before I could I truly appreciate it. After all, this was only high school. My brain tried to wrap around how someone could destroy a child’s love of music. I wanted to play again. I wanted to care but I couldn’t. I couldn’t until the accident. 

The pain that surges through my fingertips can not be contained by medication and when I finally want to play, it hurts too much. Mother stopped calling me. She doesn’t care about me. Without money I am nothing but me. I serve no purpose and that’s worse than asking her to notice me. Mother never did. Not until the money came. 

So this instrument will remain in its case and will stare at me in the face. Still with a price tag. Still with its grace. Nothing has changed except that I must live with my rage.