Musical Misery is my secret to Happiness.

There are a few things every young cellist learns before they even know how to spell “Amadeus.” Finger placement. The importance of short nails. And, of course, that pizzicato always comes first.

Because you have to earn your bow. That’s the rule — a small rite of passage disguised as a lesson in proper technique.

But what comes later, after the blisters and the scale sheets and the metronome-induced headaches, is what actually stays with you. The nuance. The discipline. The tiny humiliations. The occasional triumphs. The understanding that learning an instrument is less about talent and more about learning yourself — what you take from it, and in return, what it quietly takes from you.

I’m 22 now, a retired concert cellist in the way some people are retired child actors. My Eastman sits in a carbon-fiber case in my bedroom back home, which feels like a crime against art and humanity, one that could land me before a tribunal in The Hague. Sure, it should be possessed by someone who plays it regularly, who subsequently honors it. But I can’t bring myself to get rid of it — of him. Of Stravinsky, my cello. 

My first love. 

Like any real, authentic love, there were days I hated that thing. The endless practicing. The cramped hands. The unforgiving scales that exposed every flaw with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But now that I don’t perform anymore, I find myself missing the structure. The technicality. 

The pressure I once swore was ruining my life.

Music still follows me, though, echoing through my being. It walks alongside me like a shadow that never quite got the memo I up and quit.

Because once you train your hands to make music, you train your ears to dismantle it. And that never goes away. I can’t listen to a song on the radio without mentally peeling back the layers: drums, bass, guitar, brass. When I pass a street performer, I fully intend to drop a bill and keep walking — but instead I’m diagnosing him sharp in E minor and flat in A as I do it. It's compulsive. Involuntary. Like a tic. 

Or a curse disguised as a party trick. I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

I don’t listen to music the way my friends do, and truthfully, I envy them for it. They get the full emotional experience while I stare at the blueprint. There’s beauty in understanding how music works, but there’s a cost — very rarely do I hear a song without feeling the need to analyze it.

Or, more accurately, pick it apart to death.

I used to play everything — Bach, Beethoven, even Coldplay and Green Day. I played The Imperial March, which sounds exactly as dramatic as you’d expect on a cello: intimidating, menacing and only slightly reminiscent of a cat being strangled. That was the joy of it. Anything, even 18th century compositions or the most overplayed cultural meme, could be reshaped in my hands.

Your fingers become a weapon capable of expounding poetry. 

My cello has heard every version of me: the wide-eyed kid plagued with naivety, the confident competitor, the perfectionist, the teenager having a melodramatic breakdown before nationals. To part with him would feel like parting with a limb.

So over Christmas break, I opened the cumbersome case. I swear I heard it groan. 

Stravinsky was sharp in E and flat in C — the cello equivalent of groggy and resentful, sad and lonely. I couldn’t blame him. I understand him as much as he understands me. So I did what any lapsed musician does.

I played.

Somehow, we both came back to life.

With every note, I felt something uncoil. I looked in the mirror and, for a moment, saw a younger version of myself — frizzy hair, braces, limbs too long for my body — and she looked proud of me in a way I’d forgotten was possible.

And then I cried. 

It was an ugly, messy cry, too. Stravinsky, nestled between my legs, sat with me as I slowly forgave myself for not just quitting music or him, but on myself. Then I composed myself like a concerto and picked my bow back up.

That’s the thing about music. Even when you leave, it doesn’t leave you. The parts of you it shaped don’t vanish. They wait.

And when you do return (and you will), there’s no scolding, no punishment, no guilt trip. Just the quiet hum of recognition. 

Music meets you exactly where you are — whether you’re practicing five hours a day or rediscovering it after years of silence. It makes space for you every time.

Because music is everywhere and inside all of us. And there’s no greater joy than adding your own sound to the world around you.

Or at the very least, learning to hear it a little clearer.