Words Hurt

Recently I stumbled across someone from my past. Someone that I have spent the last twenty years trying to forget!

This man was a mentor to me. He gave me something I treasure with every fiber of my being...my love of music! He was my director. I wanted nothing more than to make him proud of me. I wanted him to praise me the way I had heard him praise other students. But for some reason, he had it in his head that the best way to motivate me was to compare me to someone I didn't like. He wanted me to get competitive, to work harder, to be better. I know that now.

I didn't then.

Back then, when he would make comments, or sarcastic jokes, all I heard in my head was "You're not good enough, you won't ever be good enough."

I wanted him to like me, I wanted him to be proud of me, and I wanted him to say, or do something to let me know that he thought I WAS, in fact, good enough. I never got it.

It has been twenty years, TWENTY YEARS!!! and still I am hurt by his rejection. Why is that? Why don't I have the power to say to myself "He was just a man, just one opinion." I have had many people tell me I'm good, I have had people tell me they hear angels when I play. But all I hear is his voice saying "Not good enough!"

I wish I could wipe him from my mind. I wish I could forget all the things he said, the way he mocked me, the things he did that made me feel inferior.

He called me by a name he knew I hated, and then got angry when I refused to respond to him. He sent me to the principals office, then demoted me to last chair as punishment.

No matter how well I played, he never put me back in first chair because he felt the need to put me in my place.

I want to hate him. I want to despise him...

I want him to tell me I was good enough, and that he was proud of me =0(

Twenty years, and it still hurts!

Be careful what you say. You never know when it will be the only thing someone hears.