Jennifer Lynn

   So, I was prompted by a friend to start posting here again. I’m tired, sad, lost so it has been hard to come here and admit that. But, I have a post that has been jiggling around in my head for a while now about music. To some people, music is just something that is part of life. For me-for as long as I can remember music has been everything.  It is special and is a deep bond I always shared with Larisa.  Maybe that is why this has been so hard to write, but here goes.

Music. I’ve been thinking about this in the whole who is Jen and where did she come from process of discovery as of late. Music has been an integral part of my life always. I was conducting classical music before I could write-Russian stuff my dad always listened to. Bolero and Marche Slave were my most favorites.  I played the drums to Little Drummer Boy during Christmas and I started playing seriously in the third grade. I would sit outside my neighbor’s house and listen to her give kids lessons. She offered to give me lessons but my parents felt that if I took piano I wouldn’t take flute seriously and vice-versa. They made me chose. Idiots.  So, I made do with forcing my friends to teach me what they knew and I did my best to be interesting in playing with them instead of hanging out at their pianos all day.

 Music was always there and I have always been passionate about it. It is part family and part of what makes me, me. I grew up with it but I also forged a new path of what music could be to me. I’ve been thinking that it was the one place where I was better than everyone else. I have always felt fat and inferior in many ways like I could never do anything right. Music was the exception. I was the best. I practiced because I wanted to and I was driven to always be the best. That competitiveness got lost in college and I’ve missed it. I see it coming back a little with spinning.

On a deeper level, I can finally see that this is a major reason for my weight gain. The one constant I had in my life-that I was the best in my musical world-was taken away from me because of who I loved, not because of a lack of talent. It was my first taste of a world where talent is ignored and you are punished because of something completely irrelevant because someone else just doesn’t like it.  I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it and instead I let it make me feel like a complete failure in my life’s work.  I didn’t have anything anymore to be the best at-I was a complete failure. Suddenly, I didn’t have anything that made me special anymore. It broke me more then I ever realized until now.

But, when the passion for playing was beat out of me in college, I still loved music. I listen to all kinds of music, I turn to music when I am alone or struggling. I listen to lyrics a lot and try to understand the intent of a song. Music can trigger all kinds of feelings for me. I hear a song and I can be crying in seconds or rockin’ out or turned on. I’ve learned that when I stop hearing music is when I’m losing myself. I can look back and see where that happened. I just need to see that before it is too late or maybe, I can hope that I will never stop hearing it again.

I just reconnected with an old music friend from high school. He is still hugely active in music and when I told him I didn’t play much he was all over me. Don’t make me come down there, he said, and for just a moment, I remembered what he still sees in me. Talent. Passion. Strength.

Jen