This morning, I woke up. My alarms were not set because I no longer have to work. I woke up when the sun started to shine through my blinds. After a few minutes of stretching and denying the harsh sun rays shining on my face, I hesitantly got out of my bed, slipped into my house shoes, and opened my bedroom door, exposing the messy, half-packed home I am still living in. I walk directly to the coffee machine and prep it for my coffee before turning around and heading back into the warm embrace of my bed for another 5 minutes.
When the smell of coffee hits my nostrils, I get up from the face plant I did on my bed. I got my cup of coffee and turned around, exposing my eyes to the empty living room that was hardly decorated except for some boxes, and ran away with the trash.
My eyes land on that one spot in the room, the corner. One empty corner. Next to the window, next to the television, diagonally from the current position I was standing in. It was gone. A split second of panic rushed through me like a tsunami before an understanding was remembered. My heart sank into a never-ending abyss. I fall down to my knees and I start wailing.
For the first time in 10 years, I didn’t have my piano. Now there was an empty shadow that is hovering over the place it used to be. And the pain from my betrail as I knew I couldn’t get it back. It couldn’t follow me, it couldn’t magically appear no matter how hard I wished. I was alone in a way I didn’t know was imaginable. I felt empty and alone.
I got my piano 10 years ago and we have been inseparable ever since. I remember running downstairs to grab the piano and experiencing for the first time how excruciating lifting it was. I remember practically dragging the piano on the stairs and getting it up to my room. I remember opening the packaging and realizing how beautiful it was. Though it looked like it was hard to put together, there were really only 3 pieces of wood and 4 screws and then the piano would be placed on top of the stand.
I had a piano in my room and I felt like to luckiest girl in the world. It was full-sized with weighted keys and the ability to plug in headphones for only me to hear. It had the capabilities to have different sounds and manipulate the piano to sound like a guitar or have a baseline track underneath the songs you are playing. I was able to play at night when my family was sleeping or play in my room during the day when I didn’t want to be surrounded by family members. I could record stuff I play and put it on my computer. I had power at my fingertips.
As the years dragged on, scars on my piano started to form. I was involving myself less and less with the piano playing. I went from playing the piano every day to every few days, to every week, every couple of weeks, every couple of months to rarely playing at all. I was so busy my senior year of high school I didn’t really get the chance. I always felt guilty about the way that I treated the piano.
Then, a big day came that changed the course of my future and my relationship with my piano. I left for college and I couldn’t bring the piano. I was living in the dorm and I just didn’t have room to bring it with me. So alone in my room it sat, waiting for me to come home and play it. But I hardly came home. I barely made my way back to the piano. And when I did come home, I would play the big piano downstairs, leaving little room or time to play my personal piano.
When I moved out of the dorm, I made a special trip 5 1/2 hours back home to get the piano and bring it with me to my first apartment. From there, the piano has bounced around the home to home, city to city, and state to state. It was always with me, and there was comfort in knowing that I could have this beautiful instrument with me. I always had plans to get back into playing the piano because I was trying to carve out time in my busy schedule to play it. But I could never commit to it. I always struggled with it, due to life reasons. Working, going to school, trying to have a social life, depressive episodes, anxiety, needing to go explore. The time that I kept trying to dedicate to love this passion again kept getting eaten by life. But the dream of being able to play again always lived on inside of my heart.
I played for so long. It was a large part of who I was and honestly, it played a large part in my personality and work ethic. So I wanted to go back to this person who used to practice a few hours a day, be able to read sheet music and play while listening. This was a skill that I spent a long time developing and I felt like I abandoned that skill when I went to college. So the hope would always be there. I memorized a few pop songs that I could play anywhere but I wanted to play Mozart or Beethoven. I wanted to play the classics again.
So when I decided that I was going to move to another country, I scoured the internet to find a company that I trusted to take care of my piano during the shipping process. Unfortunately, there was nothing. I found it hard. So after several weeks, I decided that I was going to give it to my sister and her family. She has talked for a long time about buying a piano for her kids so I thought maybe she would like this little gift. But she didn't want to accept it because she knew her kids would break it.
So I left it at my mother's house. And now I don’t have it. And the space that it has been occupying is empty, leaving me hopeless about not working towards the goal of me playing again. A passion that I once had has officially died. I feel guilty for leaving the piano alone when I'm traveling the world. It was a good friend to me. I miss it already.
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