Resolved

I began playing piano when I was just about four years old. I was still in preschool, my mother was my teacher, and I did everything in my power to avoid practicing. When I did, it consisted of playing through the pieces I was learning once, maybe twice. It was wasted time disguised as practice, but for some unknown reason, I got better. I never actually practiced until about 5th grade, and never understood the concept of practicing until I had reached high school. Why bother, if simply playing through the pieces had worked for so many years?

My first year of Junior Festival was in kindergarten. To take part in it, I had to be a member of Jr. St. Cecilia, a music club for students up to the 8th grade. At festival that year, I received a superior rating, the highest possible. I was ecstatic. Joy overwhelmed and permeated through me as water through a sponge. I was soaked, and enjoyed every minute of it. For a moment, I was wonderful, and a moment was all I needed.

From then on, I jumped at every chance to show off. I was good, and wanted everyone to know it. Every school talent show, every stage, I couldn't get enough. Yet my longing remained. See me. Look at me. Enjoy me. Love me. Delight in me. But the more I tried to show off, the less people enjoyed it. Sure, no one was going to tell me that I'm a show off. You just don't do that to 6th graders. They're new to the fact that other people have opinions about them; you don't want to tell them those opinions are bad. I was a show off and didn't know it.

By the time I got to middle school, I realized that none of my classmates liked listening to me play. They didn't care that I was the best piano player in the class. They cared that they stayed popular, and that essentially meant avoiding me. I thought there was something wrong with me. This just made me want to show off more. I practiced. I practiced like any young teenager would try to avoid. I had to get better so people would like me. This lasted through 7th grade, before I realized it had the reverse effect. But by that time I liked it, and wasn't going to give up my passion.

At the beginning of 8th grade, I got a new piano teacher. This proved to change my life completely. For the first time in years, I was delighted in. Someone finally loved to hear me play, instead of either ignoring me or nagging me to practice. And I loved it. I thought that maybe I had skill enough to be any good. I had begun my life thinking I was amazing, but as years passed, my self-image had declined. but I was released. Someone thought I was wonderful, and I was free.

I took the idea from my sister that I shouldn't care what people thought about me, so I entered high school hiding behind that thought. I wore hoodies, loose fitting hand-me-downs, and tennis shoes. That gave me the idea that I was ugly, and who likes an ugly girl? So I threw on another mask. If I couldn't be pretty, at least I could be talented. More piano. I continued to practice (and recently compose, too), and consequently got better. I realized I was a show off, at some point during 9th grade, and tried to be a hidden show off. I almost didn't enter the talent show that year (which I won 1st place in, as a freshman, playing Bach's Minuet in G behind my back and an original composition I had written at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.). It was my sister, the one who most often yells at me for showing off, but loves to show me off, that finally convinced me to enter. I was scared when I won, because I had no idea what to do. I could perform, but doing anything else on stage terrified me.

Over the next two years, I accepted it as a fact of life that I was a show off. I even joked about it with my friends. Arrogance permeated my very essence and hid my fear of failure. I thought it was okay to be that way, because no one had ever told me without it first coming up in a joking conversation that I was arrogant and needed to stop. Then it did.

I was so caught off guard that I didn't believe him at first. I told him he himself was arrogant (which is still true, but he is not as bad as me), and that I was smarter than him, and what did he know? But I'm just an idiot as you say, so what do I know, right? he told me. It wasn't until the swear words were brought out that I really started to believe him. He threatened my future, saying that I can't always assume that I'm right. I asked a few of my close friends how much of what he said was true. Two didn't speak. The third, at first, denied it. After convincing her, though, that she was my friend and not my motivator, she came through. Sometimes I talk as if I am above everyone. It's true. It came from someone I know well enough to trust.

So I have resolved to slow down. I can't simply stop cold turkey. As an addiction, a part of my life, it will be very hard to humble myself. But I will try. Every time I feel the urge to show off, I will find someone else to show off for me, in the same area. I can delight in someone else's skills, even if I think I am better. I will be humble.