The Mean Streak

Recently I confided in a couple of close friends of mine that for months.......*sigh*.......(and I dreaded admitting aloud)...........the song has been dead in my heart.

"Horror of horrors!  Say it isn't so, Songbird!"

Yes, sadly, it had been.  Of late, however, the ember has started to smolder.  About a week or so ago, I burst into song spontaneously, belting out Schubert's Ave Maria with all of the emotion I muster during a stirring high holy Marian mass.

I was at home.  Alone.  I was showering.

Perhaps it was in gratitude for making it through my surgery alive.  Perhaps it was, as my more charismatic friends would say, "the spirit moving me."  Regardless, I found my song again.

My iPod is being used again, and my vocal chords have been worked extensively.

Still, I am not yet returning to the choir loft at church.  At my parish, I don't feel welcome there, and the choir director seems to have forgotten me.  At my friend Jim's parish (where he became the music director after leaving our parish), I am welcome, but I don't feel ready yet to make the switch.

I have fallen away from the church of late, but when I DO attend, I sing only a few of the songs, usually quietly rather than robustly.

So, why oh why, did the green monster raise his ugly head when I read on another friend's Facebook status that she was asked to sing at weddings and funerals at our parish, a position that I used to hold but was forced to give up due to circumstances not of my choosing?  I'm happy for her, but in my heart of hearts, I am angry and envious.

I loathe this side of me.  Ugh.

I should swallow my pride and move on, right?  Continue the work I have started on my CD and not look back.

Ahead, the road looks much brighter.

Later daze........