Vocalise, by Rachmaninoff; for solo cello and piano

TRIGGER WARNING: disordered eating, self harm, depression, implied suicidal ideation

Place the bow on the string. Breathe in. Hold yourself in place until the piano plays, then start. Breathe out. Be bold- do not sneak into the first note.

When you were young, in middle school, maybe, you had a crush on someone. Your first love, looking back. She was a god to you- superior in every aspect: how she looked, wrote, drew, ran. You didn't know you liked her at the time, because you didn't know that you could like someone who wasn't a boy. The boy you said you liked had nice hair. Your mother thought that was funny. The last time you saw that girl was at an end of school pool party before you moved again. You still think about her, remember her brown hair and perfect face, how much she loved her sister. Perhaps, if you had stayed there, you might be with her now. She might dance with you in the snow or do your makeup for Halloween. You might help her get into costume for a show and cheer as loud as you could in the front row. It would have been a beautiful life.

Remember to keep breathing, in and out, just as a singer would. Play gently, now. Save your passion for later. Play with hope, with gentle anticipation for the future to come.

Halfway through middle school, you went to a new school. You were still bright eyed, quiet, a reader. It was small, with a tight knit community that you found challenging to get into. But you found your fellow new student: a girl from a million different places; someone who had been uprooted just as many times as you. You became fast friends; together, you drew in all the outcasts and rejects, all the people with nowhere else to go. Things were good. You'll remember how much your teachers loved you, how impressed the librarian was with your reading level. She let you read any book you wanted- even the ones restricted for your age. You made bookmarks with her, inserted yourself deep into worlds that could never exist beyond the words on a page. One time, in a Bible class, you found yourself so deep into a story that you couldn't hear the teacher calling your name until the entire class was a chorus calling out to you. You were free, then, unencumbered by the weight of the world. Your greatest fear was not turning your homework in on time and your largest problem was a small drama between two friends. Remember your gym class, with a teacher you hated and weights you couldn't lift yet. Remember the bet you had with your friend to see who could do more sit-ups: a bet she never paid you for winning. Your science teacher, who demonstrated the impact of a glacier with ice cream and candy on a week that you weren't eating any sugar. Your classmates, who were blown away and offended by your writing and the honesty of your editing, though you secretly relished criticizing them. You were excited for the future, sure of your success and prosperity. You had no reason not to be.

Liven your vibrato. Add it to the right notes. Create tone and depth with your bow, not your hands. Play as an extension of yourself; pour your soul into the music as it changes and expands; fall into it as the tone turns. Do not be afraid of the silence.

At the end of sixth grade, your health teacher taught the class about calories and nutrition. You had never considered it before- that food could negatively impact you, that you could eat too much and not recover. You were introduced to the harsh world of calories, exercise, balance, counting, and watching. You were made to track everything you ate for a day or two and add up the number of calories and, suddenly, 2000 calories a day seemed unattainable. You became obsessed- constantly worrying about what you were eating, how much of it, how much you were burning off, what you looked like, what you should look like. That summer, you went on a vacation to your happy place and, for the first time, its memory became tainted as you refused the ice cream your aunts and uncles so generously offered to you in fear of what it might do to you. You were eleven. Years later, after you had recovered somewhat- not that, you would think, you could ever recover from an awakening like that-, you would see the same thing in your brother. Nothing had ever filled you with so much fear before. The idea that your younger brother, yet so innocent and free, might be hurting in ways he would never tell you, was paralyzing. So, you encouraged him. Denounced anything and everything he mentioned about calories and drilled it into his head that calories were not unhealthy and that 2000 per day was an unrealistic number. Of course, you didn't have to believe it, but he did, and that was good enough.

Do not stop breathing. Play as you would sing, play with life and with lilt. Move into the climax, controlling the bow and vibrato. Breathe in. Hold the note. Die away. Breathe out. Descend.

In seventh grade, at the age of twelve, you met a new girl. You fell for her instantly, for the way she hugged you and smiled at you. For the way she made you feel about yourself and the world. That was the first time you consciously liked another girl. It was pure and beautiful and felt so undeniably right. You were meant to like her, liked her in a way you hadn't liked anyone before. In the same year, you met two friends with severe mental illness. This depth of sadness was something you had never seen before, never even heard about. You had no idea what you were getting yourself into when you stayed up for hours talking with these people to make sure they were okay, when you listened to their music, listened to their stories. You never regretted a second of it. Eventually, despite all the things you told them and yourself, you fell into the same sadness they experienced. You never would figure out why- you hadn't been particularly sad or had particular cause in your own life to experience it. But you did, turning to self harm and calorie counting to gain some semblance of control over your life. You cut yourself until your mind bled into static, until the scars raced up and down your thigh like a ladder. You were smart about it, cutting only where your shorts would hide, never going deep enough to have a serious impact. You receded that year, hiding yourself from the world under layers and layers of lies until the bright eyed sixth grader barely existed beyond the recesses of your mind. You packed yourself away until, one day, you looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the girl you saw.

Stop. Relax. Let the piano wash over you as the phrase ends. Wait for a new one to begin. Resettle your bow; do not rush into the music. It will speak for itself.

Later, you would be angry. Angry that people older than you had no issue exposing a pre teen to such a dark world. Angry that you still felt that pain, that you had absorbed it and made it your own. Angry at yourself, for not being able to find it in yourself to get the help you had once so generously offered to others. You would be terrified. Terrified of yourself, of the harm you still wanted to, and sometimes did, inflict upon yourself. Of your mother, of all the times she interrupted you, laughed at you, dismissed you, treated you as one of her students. You would mourn. Each and every day, you would long for the girl you had been: the one who wanted nothing more than to live life in Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, the one for whom life was not a big question to be answered or a misery to suffer through, but simply an experience to be had. The one who was whole, complete, not shattered into pieces, as you had become. Despite all this, despite the turmoil inside yourself, the fear, the hate, the pain, you would never remove that mask you put on so many years ago. Vulnerability was no longer for you, complete honesty was no longer a gift you granted people. Love was not something you felt easily, attachment became dangerous. Closeness meant transparency, transparency meant revealing the things that had caused you to lock yourself away in the first place. Every day, you promised yourself that, yes, of course, at one point, you would tell someone. In the far future, you would trust someone enough to reveal all the dark and dangerous parts of yourself. That day had not come yet. For now, the mask remained: a perfect façade to everyone except yourself: whip smart, beautiful, honest, kind, tainted with just the right amount of sadness and pain. A perfect mold.

Let your eyes fall closed. Play with deep, heavy sadness now, with a sense of closure. The end of the piece is here. End with weight, with quiet power. You have inserted your entire being into the music, and that is enough. You have played what you cannot say. Here, on this stage, putting on a perfect show, you are most yourself. The mask is finally gone. End softly, with pain and hurt. The piano will finish when you cannot go on. Breathe in. Breathe out. You have done enough.