If the PowerPuff Girls are made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice, I’m made up of anxiety, depression, and a ton of self-doubt.
It’s not like I enjoy being this way, it’s just how I’ve become over the past three to four years. I’ve desperately wanted to change my ways and be more cheerful and optimistic but no matter what, I find something to hate myself for. Sometimes I’m unable to find a reason to hate myself, a prime example being the events that occurred about an hour or two ago at the time of writing.
So, it’s about 10:00 PM and I’m with two friends of mine that I’ve known for a couple weeks at this new university of mine, just chilling out and watching them play pool as I daydream about life - you know, the usual. That’s when one of these friends, let’s call him Jeremy, mentions how he has a song stuck in his head - that song being “i’m so tired...” by lauv and Troye Sivan.
If you had asked me one week ago to sing this song from memory, I wouldn’t know what to do as I wasn’t familiar with it in the slightest. But somewhere in the past week, not sure which day in particular but Jeremy started singing this song out of nowhere and I fell in love with it instanteously.
Despite how I am a hipster and feel semi-obligated to not think highly of “mainstream” music, I really really started to enjoy this song to the point where I decided to learn it on the piano earlier today - about an hour before meeting up with Jeremy.
With this being said, when Jeremy stated that it was in his head, I said that I had learned it on the piano earlier tonight and didn’t expect much more than a simple “cool” or “nice.” But fuck, he asked me to play it for him and our other friend once their game of pool ended, which I gladly agreed to do - primarily because of how I thought he’d forget about it all (to my slight dismay, spoiler alert, he didn’t.)
Even though I was nervous as all hell to perform in front of these two people which I had really grown to enjoy over the past couple weeks, I still tried my best and to my surprise, they were awestruck by how I had done.
I distinctly remember Jeremy saying something to the extent of “Why didn’t I know you could do that?”, which I responded to with an anxiety-laced “I just kinda keep it to myself.”
He told me not to anymore, which well, I can’t lie, it felt like it was something he was telling me because I’m his friend and all that jazz and how he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
At this point, two of Jeremy’s friends, let’s name them Marissa and Abbie, walk over to the three of us. As soon as he sees them, Jeremy tells them to listen to me play this song. At this point, I play the song once again but it feels easier this time for some reason. Not quite sure why, since I’m playing for strangers that I don’t know and this would normally freak me out, but I did it perfectly.
Once I finish, both of the girls genuinely comment and compliment on how I did, and just- these kind words did end up making an impact on me since they’re coming from the mouths of complete strangers that didn’t know me five minutes beforehand. I felt as if I could trust them more than Jeremy, despite him being an amazing friend, due to the potential bias in his words due to our friendship.
Abbie told me to “please keep singing, as you have quite a gift” or something to that extent which- my emotion in that situation:
I couldn’t believe a complete stranger was saying this to me, of all people. I’m not saying any of this to give myself an ego boost, like goddamn, I think my voice is alright or pretty okay but I’ve never though that I have a “gift.”
After this, the five of us sat at the piano and sang songs together - ranging from various broadway tunes to Christina Perri’s “Jar of Hearts.”
At some point, we all said our goodbyes and left each other for the night.
As I walked back to my apartment, I realized that the experience I just had was the first time I had sat around a piano and sung with others since high school about three to four years ago.
And well, fuck, it made me feel at home with myself once again. I had missed the feeling of just being with others and letting us all speak the language that we know the best:
Did you think I was gonna say English? Well, I mean, you’re not technically wrong as the lyrics were in English but seeing as how I’m unable to really speak and make sense approximately a quarter of the time, I wouldn’t say I’m great at speaking it. Even though I can’t read music for shit, I’d still like to think it’s the language I know the best.
From this experience as a whole, I’ve learned that I need more faith in myself and more optimism in the world, because there are good people out there - they might be hard to find but they are out there, you’ve just got to find them.
If I didn’t have friends like Jeremy that threw me out of my comfort zone, I don’t know where I’d be today. I can’t not thank him and the others who’ve supported me so far this semester - I don’t know if you’ll ever see this but you all mean so much more to me than you’ll ever know.
So here’s to sitting around a piano with friends and singing our hearts out - a time that made me reminisce days far gone and hopefully look forward to many more to come.
