therapy

» secrets

"I hate it." She deleted the recording of her singing Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

"Why did you delete it? It sounded amazing!"

"No, I hate my voice. I hate the fact that I will never be able to hear my own voice. I don't know how it sounds like to other people. I sound different in my head than I do when I speak. I can't even comprehend how the recording sounds different from the words that are spilling out of my mouth. I can't put the two together and form a constellation. I just can't. And you know what? That scares me. I hate not knowing. I hate the word nothing. What's nothing? When they tell you to think of nothing, what in the world can someone think of? Darkness? That's something still; does that destroy the meaning of nothing? I mean—" I grabbed her shoulders and shushed her.

"Stop. You sound amazing. Better than I could ever try. You're overthinking this, as usual," I gave her a slight smile and continued on, "Relax and let your vocals show you who they are. They are what makes you unique. No one else in the world has the same voice as you do. How cool is that? Sure, some of us are tone-deaf when it comes to singing but we still have our own way of showing how awesome our voices are. Some people can make their voices really low like Batman and others can squeal so high that they shatter glass. They. Shatter. Glass. That could be a superpower, you know. And don't get me started on accents."

"But doesn't it scare you? How we are told to live to our potential but we will never know how we truly sound like? It's not fair."

"Name one thing in life that is fair; not even life itself is fair. And that honestly sucks so much. But think of it this way—our voices are the Universe's tiny secrets bottled up inside us and sometimes the Universe decides to be curious and open up those bottles. And right when the Universe opens the bottles, we open our mouths and speak. Some days, the bottle gets scratched up and we cry. Sometimes the Universe polishes up the bottles and fills up the scratches with happiness—then we stop crying and we laugh. It's the Universe's secrets. Our voices are secrets. And you know how it goes, secrets cannot be told. They're called secrets for a reason."

"Where did you get this...wisdom of yours?"

"Now that's for me to know and...I'm not going to say for you to find out because that's my secret. Deal with it." I nudged her shoulder and we both laughed.

"Is the Universe filling our scratched-up bottles with happiness?" She raised her eyebrow.

"Maybe."