Session I

This is my story.

My name what the hell am I talking about? You already know it. What really confuses my poor little self is why the hell you even want me to WRITE this. Don't pull the Socratic crap out of the hat and say, "Ahh, you must discover this for yourself, young Grasshopper." I don't buy it. But hey, it's better than the "thinking sessions".

So. I guess I'll start.

It began January 21 the year 1999. That was the year I turned sixteen. Come to think of it that was the day I turned sixteen too. I bought a car because I had been saving for, like, five years and I'm stubborn that way. It was just a little navy blue hatchback, second hand, but in "working" order.

That was also the year and the day that I wrote my first song. It had been spinning in my head for some time and I didn't know if it would turn out right. But the day of my birth (only sixteen years later), I got into my car with a notebook filched from my brother's endless supply.

There's this place about fifty miles away from my "home". It's a nice little windswept cliff with a road that winds along the sea. I discovered it when I was learning how to drive. I've been going out there every weekend for six months. On my birthday, I pulled up to my spot where I used to sit and just plunk out random tunes and phrases on the guitar. But since I came here=8Athere's no time and no allowance for me to be anywhere.

But this isn't about now. I mean, it'll be about now when it's later and I'm writing about now, but then it will be later, so now won't be really now but then. But since this is now, I'm writing about the thens that already have been.

Ever since I was eight, I've been taking music lessons. Violin, flute, piano, drums, sax, clarinet, oboe, guitar, even harp once or twice when we were on a trip. But guitar was the one that stuck. I wrote lots of little ditties for the other instruments, but guitar I left alone, for fear that I would mess up the love I felt for the six strings and wide, wooden body.

I started taking guitar itself at twelve. My peers started bands at around the same time, started songwriting then too, but never once before my sixteenth birthday had I penned down a song of my own. Despite my passion and aptitude for the instrument.

So I was a little nervous, to say the least. Sitting there on my windswept ledge with the waves breaking on the rocks not too far below and the grass all craggy and matted. Here goes, I thought, I'm going to write a song. And then it just happened.

When the song was done, I sat there and played it maybe about thirty times again and again, each time it morphed a little more, each time it became something natural and came into its own.

That's the only perfect song, the only GOOD song that I have ever written. Ever. The rest are all just splashes of energy, sloppily displayed over an obnoxious guitar riff and a redundant melody.

I went home. Walked in the door. I felt strange. I was supposed to feel all weightless and carefree Amy accumulated thoughts of four years where on paper and completed. But I felt like part of me had been ripped out and then clumsily sewn back in. Back in the right place, but a bit foreign, as if the rest of me had aged in its absence and it came back just a tad behind.

This has always intrigued me. The first song I wrote (called Brush) is the only song I deem worthy of anything more than a page in my notebook, as you already know. But if it was a good song, why did it make me feel so broken? If it was so right, why did it feel so wrong? This is what I pondered during the long, bullshit "thinking sessions".

Back to the past.

I received my presents--money and some clothes--with quiet gratitude. Eventually, I went to my room and tried to fall asleep, but I couldn't shake the lurking feeling at the back of my mind. I got out of bed and tinkered away on the guitar. Nothing came. Frustrated, wanting another song, I slammed the strings. It hit something. I changed two notes and played it again. A tune trickled out as I let my fingers off the frets, a tune that I ignored then and would never capture later. I leapt in, bloodthirsty for another song that felt as right as the first one had. I shoved the innocent, accidental tune aside, trying instead to incorporate all the latest trends.

In my sanguinary plunging after a second song, I lost something true, and failed at even masquerading the incorrectness I acquired as acceptable. I failed completely. The really bad thing is that this didn't even hit me right then. I didn't even realize how badly I had done. I was so wrapped up in the highly romanticized image of songwriting that I simply chose not to believe that failure at music would hit so hard. I chose not to believe. Whereas now, I know how blind I was for denying myself those few, precious moments of self-loathing.

Yes, that was sarcastic. Now put the "emergency counseling request" sheet down and let me continue.

I stormed down the hall to the bathroom, fuming and raging in the dead of night on my sixteenth birthday.

When my cousins had come to visit when I was fourteen, I gave up my bed and slept in the bathtub. My mom didn't approve (of course), but I kinda liked it. It was quiet and enclosed and the moonlight drifted through the bottle glass window and rested on my skin, settling into my veins and calming me.

I tossed my blanked into the tub and let myself fall in, dropping my head against the pillow. As I sat there, I thought. At this point, I was vexed and dumbfounded why the song hadn't worked. I knew, vaguely, that I had missed a tune somewhere in there, but I was more wondering along the lines of, Does every song need four years? Do I need to write them on the bluffs? Am I just no good? Does this top match this nail polish? OMG, Kristy, I love your hair! Yeah.

I was so stupid that night. How could I possibly have been so completely BLIND about the music? How could I just have ignored all artistry and lunged after the kill, jaws agape and drooling? I just don't see how anyone could possibly be so idiotic.

While my shallow, unobtrusive worries began to overcome my shallow, unobtrusive self, I bitchily put on the headphones for the CD player that I sleep with on. It was my "angry music" burn, one I had collected when I had way too much free time. Pianists banged on the keys and violins shrieked and groaned. Riffs and reverbs taunted me, pushing me farther and farther away from the slaughtered song that I didn't even realize I had killed until I was as isolated as a match amongst candles, mocked by


Session II

After being rudely interrupted yesterday, I noticed that we were forty minutes late. Glancing back at the pages of written words, I was surprised I hadn't noticed sooner that our thirty minutes was long gone.

Ashamed of the soul I had bared in yesterday's "session", I thrust the paper at Doyon, head down. She stamped it, signed it, and moved on. I found this strange. As my "personal well-being assistant" (what a euphemism, huh?), shouldn't she read everything I have to say? It was then I discovered that Doyon is a coun--excuse me, "personal well being assistant"--IN TRAINING. Huh. If I'm not fucked-up enough to have a real counselor, then why be here at all?

But I digress. Or stall. Whatever.

The next day, after my birthday, I woke up with the headphones pressed against my face uncomfortable. My brother was sitting on the closed toilet, watching.

"Morning." I grunted in return. He had probably been up since seven, the freak. "Rough night?" Another grunt. My brother was freshly eighteen at the time, and in the process of moving out. He had two books published to his name, one a book of poetry, and the other an autobiography called Preemie. This is the title because of his referring to it as "a short, premature life's story".

All of his teachers loved him (he graduated that year--two years ago now). A literary genius. A quiet boy. A nice boy. A straight A, straight arrow kid. On the outside, that's what he is: shaggy, but somehow neat, introspective, maybe a tad broody, but that was taken to mean that he thought deeper than the masses, blah blah blah. But on the inside, he's a life force. He's so filled with love for the world. If you get to know him, he'll open your eyes to so many things. But his teachers never did that. They took him at face value as the big-eyed boy in the back of the room.

I asked him once, "Why are you so quiet?" He said, "So that when I talk, you'll listen."

He sat there, leaning his elbows on his knees, watching me.

"What?" I finally snapped, struggling with the bedding and wires. He shrugged.

"You wanna go for breakfast?" I gave him a blank stare. "Sans parents," he added. At this, I stood up and, with as much dignity as one dragging half her bed and a CD player, I walked out of the room.

Two minutes later we were in the car. We drove for five miles and pulled up outside of a teahouse. I ordered peppermint and half a baguette. He ordered coffee and an orange. After we sat down, he started talking.

"So." He raised one eyebrow when I didn't reply. "I heard you playing your guitar last night," he coaxed. I remained taciturn. "Sounded good." At this, I snorted and gulped tea.

"Thanks," I dismissed, placing my cup deliberately onto the table, "but I don't need it."

"Luc" he let his voice trail off in exasperation. "You do need it. But not just from me." I knew what the rest of the sentence was going to be. You need it from yourself. My brother and I had a great relationship, and he was always pestering me about it, always worrying that I was never happy. I was happy. I am happy. Excuse me while I go convince myself yes, that was a joke too, now sit down.

We ate the rest in silence. He drove me home. I thanked him and grabbed my guitar before driving out to the coast. It was a Sunday.

After I arrived, I sat, waiting for something, anything to surface. A few distant notes floated by, but I let them go, knowing that they weren't songs, but just random notes.

I have strong feelings about music. Those who don't understand it shouldn't try to. Those who don't write it shouldn't perform it. And those who pretend to do these things should NOT call themselves musicians.

So naturally, I wasn't about to try and put these empty musings onto paper.

Having nothing to do but think, I sat and ruminated the previous night. It slowly came to me how awful it was to have made mad grasps at the straws of a song that didn't exist. It slowly came to me that if music didn't come to you as naturally as leaves come to trees, then you shouldn't do it at all. I felt like nothing. I knew I was nothing. I knew I wasn't meant to be a musician if the best I could do was one song every four years and then silly attempts after that. I felt like a moron, a no-talent loser who did nothing except sit and scribble nothings for no one.

I got worked up. My fingers stopped moving across the frets and strings. My breathing deepened, quickened. I was genuinely afraid, too. I mean, I had felt badly before, but never this bad. Never like violence, never like reddened vision and impending pandemonium. Nothing like a little demon crawling and clawing, never before tingling on the back of my neck and wrists. Nothing like a huge, blood curdling scream at the back of my throat.

I picked up my pen, a whirlwind of wasp stings, and hovered it over my arm, remembering stories about girls who did that kind of stuff, about all the darkness behind their eyes. Almost immediately, I was disgusted. What a weakness! What a weakness! To resort to carving your arms out to release the pain of failure? I was appalled that I had even considered it. I was enraged that I even had sunk that low. I opened my notebook, now the fury and frustration and disdain all blended into a nice tingly feeling that was flying around my innards like a spiked ball.

I snatched up my pen again and started writing, releasing, pushing it all out, all the urges to let the pen pierce my skin, scraping all those horrid longings out from my insides. Naturally, the finished project wasn't pretty, but it was better on paper then in me.

When I was done, I felt good. I felt light and airy. Idiosyncratically, I wrote a pleasantly bubblegum song that was crafted and weightless, like bird's bones. It amused me and I sat there for another forty minutes, playing chipper music, staring at the sea, and smiling a sarcastic smile.

Session III

I guess I'll take some time now to talk about school.

When they were considering taking me here, my academic record was scrutinized down to every last letter grade. Another point for the "Lucy should go home" argument--they had to CONSIDER sending me. If they have to consider it, why do it at all? The school record ALONE was almost enough to convince them that I am sane, but then I did the "blowing up in your face" thing, so that sort of changed the minds of key participants in the Life of Me.

I'm a good student. Always have been. It doesn't take very much effort and it satisfies my inner perfectionist. Plus, the payoffs are great; teachers trust you.

School two days after my sixteenth birthday was boring. All I could think about was the songs over the weekend and the mutilated pages in my notebook. At the time, it seemed like a distant memory.

On the way home, I made a pit stop at an arcade where I played pinball and some racing games, just having some fun on a Monday afternoon, blah, blah, blah.

I got home and, naturally, my mother freaked. An hour late?! Was I trying to worry her to death?! Did I know how close she came to calling the police?! Did I want her to die early, is that what I wanted?!

I swear, my mother should be Jewish.

When my brother's enormous talent was discovered (which was early, let me tell you), my parents backed off worrying about him. They didn't want to destroy his creative aura, or something. At that time, I was eight and taking my first piano lessons.

So my mother, at a loss for something to do, burrowed into my life. If I didn't eat all of my breakfast, I had an eating disorder. If I nicked my legs shaving, I was suicidal. If I had white stuff on my upper lip, I was a drug addict. No, I didn't have powdered sugar on my Eggos, I was a drug addict. Coming home late from school was a felony in my life. Never mind the fact that my brother (named Derek, by the way) came home every night at around eleven thirty, only to sit at his desk (sometimes under it) with one light on, writing something or another.

When I was twelve and taking guitar, she found my diary and perused it, analyzing and practically marking the margins in a red pencil. I found out and exploded. Privacy is important to me. So, you ask, why are you writing this? Because it's my only ticket out of here, that's why. Displaying my deepest thoughts to get some privacy. How's that for a paradox?

Anyway. I spontaneously combusted at her and used all of my best vocabulary, spouting and spewing and being so vociferously articulate that she was forced to accept this as my will. I didn't speak to her largely for a couple weeks until I was positive that my life would remain untouched for the rest of my time living there.

By the way as soon as y'all let me out, I'm buying my own place. Probation can go to hell. Nah, I was just kidding! What I wouldn't give for some nice invasion of my poorly repaired life! That just bought me another six months, didn't it? Don't lie. I know these things.

For about four weeks, nothing happened. School was fine. Life was fine. My mom was fine. Blah blah blah was fine. I nearly forgot about the birthday incident except when I flipped open my red book, warranting me a quick pang to the gut. Nothing serious. Nothing like the demons I felt that day.

I was a happy little girl. And I liked it that way. When I wrote a bad song, I was only bothered a little, nothing too serious. I just sort of chalked it up on my little board of doom and moved on.

But then, the board started filling. I had to write on the back, and then I had to start using different color chalks to distinguish one screw-up from another until they all became one looming mass of my problems. A quiz with a score of less than 100 became a major let down. A pass missed in football during Phys Ed was a reason to lock myself in a stall at lunch. But things about music were worse. A chord flubbed on the cello (my school instrument) was a reason to sit in the dark for hours after school. A note forgotten was a huge offence. And when, just for a moment, I had to think about which string is the D string on my guitar, the board fell down.

Session IV

Where did we leave off?

I can still recall how I felt. Shocked. Horrified. How could I, a guitar player of four years, just forget which string is a D string? How could I? I sank deeper and deeper. As I reached the lowest point on the curve, I took a deep breath and told myself that it was OK. Trying to shake it off, I pressed my fingers onto the frets and tried to play a nice D arpeggio. My top finger slipped off and it turned into a train wreck. At this, I broke. I stood up from where I sat, breathing heavily. I had candles burning on my windowsill and, not realizing, only feeling disgust for myself, only knowing how putrid I had become in forgetting one of the fundamentals of what was, basically, my lifeblood, I thrust my arm into the flame.

But you already knew that.

I jumped when I figured out that my arm was getting burned and cursed, jerking my arm away and blowing out the candle. Then the pain came. Two kinds. Strike that, three kinds. Kind one was, obviously, physical pain, sliding up and attacking from behind. Kind two was outraged pain; I was nauseated that I had actually done it. God it still makes me sick. Kind three was the unwarranted pain. The pain that still existed over forgetting about the D string. That pain didn't even deserve to be pain. Shoulders hunched, I slunk down the hall to the bathroom and ran cold water over my arm.

Now I feel sick again.

And no, I don't want to talk about it.

Session V

That was the past. The present is different.

For instance, in the past, I had privacy, due to a mistake on the part of my mother. I bet if I blew up at you here, all I'd get was a thinking session. Which I'm happy to have left behind.

In my five months here, I've had so many thinking sessions. So many. I've had therapy sessions, self-help sessions, trips to serene Japanese tea gardens (which are beautiful). And all the time, you've known about my "rocky circumstances". And you've tried to bring them up. But, playing the frightened, waifish ingenue, I pretended not to notice your hints and overtures. I bet you're just quavering in your boots at the fact that I am finally bringing up the Burning Incident. I bet you are. Oh, don't lie, honesty is so important. Oh it is.

That's another thing I figured out. As much as I hate to say it, I figured it out during a dreaded thinking session. Honesty has become a new principle of mine, along with the music one and the privacy one. I figured out that, during the Dark Ages, I wasn't honest with myself. I thought that I was coming into my own as a musician, just going through the growing pains of art, when really, I was doing something sick and wrong in allowing my self-criticalness escalate to self-hate. I think that, on some level, I realized that this wasn't natural, but still I pushed it aside. I'm good at pushing things aside.

After this, I just sort of pinched my arms or bit my tongue when I sank. But never my hands. My hands were the only things holding on. Ha ha! No pun intended! But. I knew that if I didn't have the lifeline of guitar playing, everything would just whirl out of control, whereas then, it was going at a nice, steady downward slope that I could handle.

I went to the beach sometimes. Mostly in shorts and a tee shirt. Sometimes I'd walk into the water up to my chest and let the waves lift me up and down for a long time, just staring out at the horizon, thinking about new songs, thinking about new knowledge, thinking about everything that was worth thinking about. Just thinking.

Derek often offered to come with me, but I always said that I'd rather go alone. He was worried about me. But I pushed him aside too. Maybe if I didn't, maybe if I had let him come closer, this would've never happened. There are so many wrong turns that I've made. Shoving away the one thing trying to pull me closer was one of them.

One day in September, something bad happened. School had just started. I was a junior. Funny, was I still am a junior, just a warped junior sitting in a green room. Anyway. This was a good thing because Jazz Band accepted (accepts?!) exclusively juniors and seniors. On the fourth day of school, we had tryouts for a solo after hours. I knew how well the other kids played. I listened carefully to them during class time to gauge myself and to calculate how hard I would have to try. I decided that I was better than them and often spent class time daydreaming about what I would do with the solo. I memorized the solo piece. I played with it and tinkered with it.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that the audition was a completely unfamiliar piece to be read cold in front of the band and the solo applicants. I knew I wasn't ready for this. I was ready to play the solo. I wasn't ready to sight-read. I told myself that I could pull out and go for the next solo. I told myself that no harm would be done. But I wanted that one. I needed to prove myself. Plus, what if, when he called my name and I declined, the whole room ridiculed me for being a chicken? I was petrified of both possibilities.

So I decided to audition.

I went up to the front of the room when my name was called, lifting my instrument tenderly off the floor. I sat. My heart thumped so quickly I couldn't feel it.

Then I played.

It was awful. I went too slow and couldn't handle the tons of key changes and funky rhythmic traps. The last chord I struck was wrong. I clenched the neck of the guitar, wishing it was my own, afraid to let go.

The jarring chord rang in the room.

Then there was silence. I stood up and started back to my seat. The director's voice stopped me cold.

"Did you prepare for this?" I nodded. "What did you do?" I was horrified. There was no black or white answer to this. I had to speak.

"I learned the solo piece."

"Is that it?" I nodded. The kids rolled their eyes and chairs squeaked as they shifted, embarrassed for me.

"So, Miss" he regarded his paper, "Gray. Where you listening when I told you that the audition would probably include cold reading?"

Terror struck me. He said that? When? Where had my brain been? My throat dried.

If movement was measured in sound, you wouldn't have heard me shake my head.

"So you weren't listening?" He didn't wait for my reply. "What, pray tell, did you find more compelling, more important, than music?"

Silence. "You wrote on your application that you are a very serious musician. Were you lying?"

Silence. A long time must've passed. I lost the time as my head spun, his words bouncing off the cavernous walls of my empty mind. He sighed.

"I see. Robert Domingo." I stood there, frozen as the auditions continued around me. Eventually, I jolted myself awake and moved across the room to my seat. I didn't walk. I merely moved. I packed away the guitar. Not my guitar. The guitar. I left as the first perfect notes of Robert Domingo sang out into the hall.

I don't remember driving home. Or even walking in the door and moving up the stairs to my room. I just remember sitting in the bathtub, rubbing a blade against my skin, both absent and blind-sided at the same time.

Session VI

We were late yesterday, too.

When I emerged from the bathroom that fateful day, I began moving slowly towards my room. My mother came prancing out. She spotted me, no matter how hard I wanted to be missed.

"Where in God's name have you been?! You were supposed to clean the house this afternoon! Why didn't you remember?! Weren't you listening when I reminded you this morning?! You know, Lucy, I just don't know who you are anymore."

"Neither do I," I said softly. She stopped.

"What?! What?! Where are you going?!"

"I have to go drop something off at the post office. I'll be back."

She stared at me. Almost past me, and watched me leave.

I moved in an orderly fashion to my car.

I drove.

My wound stung.

My arm throbbed.

My head spun.

As I drove along the plains towards the bluffs, my heart started hammering and my breathing started deepening. In a burst, I slammed on my brakes and jumped out of the car, speeding into a slow crescendo run, while my mind bashed against the walls of my skull.

I lost track. Tripped. Fell down a ditch. My leg enflamed with pain.

Pain was the last thing I knew as I went unconscious.

Truth time. I don't want to be writing this. I don't want to be remembering. I don't ever want to remember again. So let's make a deal. I remember this once. And you agree. And never bring it up again. And I live a happy life. Safe. And forgetful.

The story goes that Derek figured out where I had gone and drove after me. He found me, leg broken, unconscious, in a ditch. He called an ambulance. While he waited, he read the notebook that was then filled with hundreds of bright shocks of pain. He got scared. Told a police officer. They spoke to my mother.

And I woke up here. Two days later.

That's as far as the story goes. It's been five months since that day. Five months filled with uncomfortable chairs that force me to squirm and make you think that, by squirming, I want to talk when really I didn't until I realized that talking is the only way out. The only flickering exit sign that hasn't completely turned off.

I don't really trust myself. Not really. I don't trust myself to forget completely. I don't trust myself never to remember again. However. I do trust that, if I do remember, I will be so afraid that I force myself to forget again. I trust that I'll catch myself if I should ever fall again. Thus closing the door on this chapter of my life.

So you can keep this in your file. You can prod me all you want. But know this.

I can save my self now. I've never been able to before, but there's a first time for
everything.

It took me seventeen years. But now. I can save myself.