Musical Goodness
I really love electronic music. I think it's one of the greatest sounds ever manipulated in such a way to creat a melody. I listen to techno and other electronic type music daily. It's what fuels me. Music is my soul. It's who I am, and will forever be a part of me. Whenever I can get the chance to do live sound I feel nothing but joy in my heart. I enjoy technology and when it mixes with music, it is like acheiving the perfect maranaide. It gives me such a high. I don't know why any person feels the need to do drugs. When you do something you love, and truly enjoy, there is nothing that can take the pleasure away. It's a high that doesn't have a come down, and doesn't have a hangover. It's the perfect form of ecstasy. I could spend an entire day explaining my love for audio technology and yet still not have you reach full comprehention. There is no other way to describe my love for music other than saying it gives me a high. We will just leave it at that.
Ice skating is a passion of my. I love ice skating. Probably more than anything else in the world. Music is my soul indeed, but my heart belongs to skating. If you remove figure skating from my life, you are removing a part of me. Nothing will ever be able to fill the void. The best aspect of skating, for me, is skating to the music of a program. What better way to marry both parts of me into one by putting the music with the skating? When I heart that music start, the music I long for, the music I need to survive, my heart is pulled as if tied to a rope. The music tells my body what to do and my heart responds to the call within my soul. When that music starts playing, I want nothing more than to express my heart without words. It's just not possible to use my words. I have to communicate through movements. My body is the instrument and I am only trying to make meaning music with my instrument.
I make it a point to accept and take life as it comes. This includes any medical issues that may arrise. My ears are slowly loosing their ability to hear, and there is nothing I can do about that. The only thing I can do, is trust that God has my life in His hands and that everything is going to be fine. I have to believe that He will take care of my hearing because of who He made me to be. Playing the piano is only way that my stress can be relieved. Why would God give me a unique ability only to take it from me? He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't take away the core of who He made me to be. I can't have kids, and that's ok. There are millions of children in the world who need parents to love them, and I believe God made me this way to care for those children. I don't make a lot of money. My husband and I have enough to get by, and every now and then we get "Jesus money" in the mail which has helped tremendously. I do my best to never complain about what I have and do not have, because I know that life can always get worse so I need to be grateful for what I have now. It's not hard to accept pain and move on. It took me a few years to figure that out, but now it comes naturally. However, there is still something that I find impossible to accept. The pain becomes so strong every 4 years. This pain is caused by the winter olympic games.
Now, I know that it may never have been possible for me to go to the winter olympics for figure skating but how am I suppose to know that today? I never made it there. I never saw how far I could go. I never found my limits. Ice skating was ripped from my life when I was 12 years old. I still remember the phone call that day when I was told figure skating lessons were no longer going to be funded. I still can feel the pain. I couldn't breathe. I cried my self to sleep for 3 days. I tried to continue practicing and teaching myself the new moves hoping that someday ice skating would resume and the pain would depart from me. But it didn't work that way. Pretty soon the trips to the rink became less frequent, and with the lack of practice, skating became more and more difficult. My muscles were starting to forget what came so natually to them not so long ago. Soon the rink trips ceised entirely. I became an empty shell. I was not able to do something I had such a deep passion for. I wanted to acheive every little figure skater's dream of going to the olympics. The 2014 winter olympics to be exact. I had a plan. I had a goal and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. The only problem was that I was 12. If I was in high school, I would have gotten a job and all the money I made would go towards my training. But I was 12.
A huge part of me wishes someone would have fought for me. You hear stories all the time of parents sacrificing their lives so that their kids could acheive a lifetime dream. Single moms worked 3 or 4 jobs and still had time to travel and see every competition their child performed no matter where in the country it was. No one did that for me. To be clear, I am not saying that I have anything against my family for not supporting me better as a child. I had plenty of support and my mom worked very hard to raise us by herself. I just wanted to make that clear, that I have nothing against my life growing up. Looking back on that time when I really wanted something and was willing to give up everything I had for it, I want to be the person who helps make that sacrifice along side my children. If I have to move to benefit my child, then I will. I don't want their dreams crushed because I could not find a way to make it happen. Anyway, I'm getting off track.
After I hid my ice skates and all equipment related to ice skating from my sight, I then had to block out any outside influence that might remind me of figure skating. This meant missing winter olympic games. I didn't allow myself to watch them, did not allow mself to have any reminders whatsoever. I had to erase that part of my life. Only it wasn't working. Figure skating is such a strong passion in my life that there is nothing I can do to remove it. It would be as if I decided I will no longer see out of my right eye. That's stupid. I will always have the ability to see out of my eye. I can't just will the sight to stop going to the right eye. It was the same with skating. It's impossible to remove.
The 2008 Summer Olympics is what pushed me over the edge. They had nothnig to do with figure skating but it was watching the diving that really bothered me. When I was younger, I got swimmers ear pretty bad and have since been unable to go underwater without ear plugs. I was hoping to take up diving and quite possibly make it to the olympics that way since they had diving at my college. I think God was trying to keep me from persuing an athletic dream. Watching those divers made me remember all those feelings I had been trying to ignore for years. The pain was too much; screamed and threw and broke things. I punch my giant stuffed frogs in teary frustration. I had finally released what I had been holding in since I received that phone call all those years ago.
The very next day, I got online and searched for adult learn to skate classes. I was 19, had my own place and a good paying job. This time I was incontrol of my own desires. I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that I could have paid for my own lessons. I had had a job for a while. I looked up my old ice rink and saw that they were offering adult lessons, so I gave them a call and left a voicemail. The next day, I got a call back from one of the coaches that worked at the rink. It happened to be my old coach. I don't know if she noticed, but as soon as I heard her voice I broke out in tears. It was finally coming back. I was finally getting my missing piece back. I set up a date and time to meet for a lesson and I screamed for joy the entire drive home. I couldn't have been happier.
You would think that since I am skating again that I would be happy and not worry about what happneed in the past and just accept it and move on. But I can't. You see, when I took my first lesson when I was 11, I was doing all the single jumps within 1 year and was learning more advanced moves. I have been skating for 5 years and I still cannot do all the single jumps. I don't know why skating as an adult is so difficult. I could have become someone when I was 12. I could have made a name for myself at the 2014 olympics. And now I am not going and it's really hitting me hard. JD says I skate beautifully and I should just let it go. It's really hard to do that. I had dreamed of going to the olympics since I was 3 and now that my time has finally arrived, it's not happening. They are sending a mechanical skater who has no chance at medaling and they kick off a girl who got 4th last time. USFSA is weird.
Anyhow, I just wanted to share my feelings with you. Have a wonderful day!
