Saturday, November 12, 2011
It is early Saturday morning and I am very upset. I feel like I have no talent anywhere. I spent $40,000 on an undergraduate music degree that got me nowhere. I spent years studying piano with a piano teacher I adored who failed to put me on the collegiate track and didn't successfully teach me technique. Now I have another piano teacher I've been working with recently who wants the best for me but says I am missing way too much technique. That's because by the time I studied music, first at College of Marin, and then at Sonoma State, my lack of sight reading, lack of technique were both so bad, that the music faculty didn't want to believe in my success without treating me harshly. Now, when I want to learn and make my debut as a piano soloist under Tara Flandreau's baton with the College of Marin Orchestra, I can't even begin to find a teacher who will help me attain this dream--a teacher who will work with me to bring my technique up to par and a teacher who knows I can't pay a lot per lesson. Added to that, my eyesight now makes reading music more difficult. I feel like I just wasted years of study and more money than I can possibly pay the government back--for a degree I can't even use.
My self esteem and confidence are low. Really low. Every disciplne I've ever tried to succeed in and every job I've ever held--people have dismissed me and told me I would never make it. That's all I've ever heard my entire fucking life. I would like to debut the second movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, but I really don't have anyone to help me work my way up to that level.
I pretty much feel like I don't have enough talent in any one area nor the skills to have a career. My friend Cole. He's a different story. He is artistic with such a talent. He has a woman who loves him more than the world. He has female friends who are ALWAYS initiating contact with him. I love Cole! But it's difficult for me not to compare myself to him. I feel like I have NOTHING going for me. Cole has everything going for him. He's never had a single challenge either in his professional or personal life. It's always been smooth sailing for him. I wish I had his life. Because right now, I feel so low that I don't know why God even created me. I feel like a waste of flfesh. A waste of human existence with no support for my goals--my disabiliies--my feelings. I have truly failed at everything: obtaining a career, a girlfriend, close friends who love me. I've failed as a music graduate. I failed Marilyn Thompson at Sonoma State University. I failed the ability to learn and perform a concerto. I failed being able to be a piano performance major with a performance degree. I was a failure to countless of my former music classmates at SSU. I spent ten fucking years working towards a music degree that I can't even use. I can't even get a piano teaching job at a music school or Music to My Ears because the staff there don't want to hire and work with me.
I feel about as low as I possibly can right now. God has prepared me for a lifetime of struggle and anguish. Everything I do fails! All I can do is continually watch porn on my computer late at night because it's the only thing that emotionally and physiologically soothes. I will never find someone who understands my disabilities in the music world to take me on and help me learn a concerto. I have a piano sitting in my bedroom I haven't even touched because I have not been able to bring myself to feel positively about the piano. Not after years of music teachers yelling at me, telling me I would fail. That's what's engrained in my head.
I'm a failure at living a normal life. I'm a failure with attraction because I'm a failure when it comes to maintaining a healthy self esteem and being confident. I feel anything but.
Perhaps my only place in the world is to be 51/50'd and held in a mental institution for psychological animal testing and observation!