HEAL YOU | JENLISA

FORTY-TWO

JENNIE

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BECAUSE I REJECT THE NOTION THAT ALL THE BEST VIOLINS have already been made, that nothing from the present or future can compete with the past, I opt to buy a violin handcrafted by a modern luthier based in Chicago. It doesn’t cost as much as a house thankfully, but it’s not cheap either. I spend most of my savings on it. It’s worth every penny, however. Its voice is sweet and bright and achingly beautiful, and I fall in love with it the instant I test it out, playing my first clumsy scales in nearly a year.

Once I bring it home, I’m determined to conquer the Richter piece. I’ve had so much time away. I should be returning to music well rested and full of fresh perspective. I vow that I’m going to master the piece within a month. Back before my Internet fame, it took me less time than that to gain fluidity with a piece of music. I should be able to do it, especially with this new violin.

It doesn’t work that way. I immediately fall into the same mental trap as before, only it’s worse now. I play in horrid, never-ending loops all day, and when I stop to rest, my mind is battered and drained in a way I’ve never experienced. Still, I’m determined to forge through. I tell myself that I will finish this, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.

I end up pushing myself so hard that I burn out even worse than I did previously. I lose days and weeks. I lose functionality. This time, in addition to grief and rage, there’s anxiety, desperation. The Richter piece is trapping me, ruining my life. I want to be free. Why can’t I get free?

If I can’t play my way free, there’s one other way …

From there, I plummet into pure darkness.

But there’s a light that keeps me from falling too far. That light is Lisa. When I get up in the middle of the night, nauseated and silently sobbing and tempted, so tempted, to set myself free in the only way I believe I can, she senses something is off. She wakes up. She holds me. She asks me what’s wrong.

I know she’ll believe me. I know she won’t look down on me and tell me to pull up my big-girl pants and tough it out. So I tell her the ugly truth of my thoughts and fantasies, and she cries as she rocks me from side to side.