I haven’t been able to sleep before 4am since he moved.  (Oh, and from here on out, I’ll call the boyfriend/man situation by the name Daren.)

And I’m scared to go to my voice lesson tomorrow because I haven’t been practicing.  I hate practicing.  I always have.  When I was a kid and took flute I never liked practicing.  Which was really too bad because when I did practice, I was pretty darn good if I don’t say so myself.  But I have this weird, stupid, irrational and self-conscious fear of people overhearing me practice.  Whether it was my flute, guitar, or singing.  And yeah, I am going to partially blame this on my dad.  What cha ya gonna do about it?

Oh and by partially I mean the bigger part, you know, the one that matters.

He was – who am I kidding, still is! – so critical of everyone but himself.  I always feared his criticisms.  Just by the fact that he said it I would not want to change at all or get better.  Oh, and he also had this one great criticism of my mom that she never said anything positive first, and that she always had to be critical and start arguments.  I also always start arguments, too, according to him.  Because when he’s wrong about something I’m not going to say anything?  Please!  I was brought up by him; the stubbornness wore off.

But the thing about practicing is that I want to feel alone.  I want to feel like I can really let loose and be free.  I want to be free to make mistakes so I can learn to correct them on my own.  I want to feel like I am barring the mess I am to myself and fine tuning it to make it presentable.  But when someone criticizes me while I’m in that process it kills it.  Hell, even when someone compliments me during that process that is practicing, it ruins the privacy I want and need for it but confirming the fear that someone heard.

Practicing music is like a dressing ritual to me.  You show yourself to yourself and it’s something no one else can see – or that only the very special hand picked lucky individuals can see.  And than you place on the  undergarments like boring warm-ups that just need to be done.  You brush knotty hair and not as white as you like teeth in repetitive motions, like the exercises that bring the piece all together.  Then you finally put an outfit on, but there’s always still adjustments to make.  Like sometimes you just can’t find the right shoes because there’s one part you keep messing up on.  But you re-do that part over and over and over again until you get it right.  And only when you are ready can you show the final ensemble.  Granted it’s not always final after that.  Sometimes people you trust can give a second opinion on the fine tuning accessorizing.  But when someone who wasn’t asked comes waltzes in during the middle of this sacred procedure, you look like a maniac and might be – if not fully – partially naked.  That’s so inappropriate for a father to walk in on!

I practice singing in my car.  My car is my greatest sanctuary.  I feel like no one can see or hear me when I’m on the highway, so it doesn’t matter how loud I sing (scream during those rarer angry moments…) or if I’m off on certain higher notes, or switch between octaves in weird places when trying to sing songs sung by male vocalists.  No one hears me.  My car is to me as the garage is to Weezer back in the day when they rocked and couldn’t afford recording studios.  Ah, now wouldn’t that just solve my problem….

But no.  I still can’t sleep.  I have a voice lesson in 8 hours that I haven’t practiced for since last week when I had my last lesson.  Let alone slept for.  And in the mean time, all I can do is miss Daren.

How can I not miss him?  He’s the only person who really ever has inspired me to be me.  Everyone else ever encouraged me to do my best or do what’s best, or were more passively supportive of whatever I ended up doing.  But Daren somehow inspired me to figure out whatever the hell I want, and to go after that.  I like to sing and I like to write.

No one can overhear me write.  Especially when I do it at 4 in the morning.