Exactly Where I’m Meant to Be

It doesn’t feel real.

But it is.

I’m so much closer to being a music therapist, more so than ever before, and it’s hitting me all at once.

My coursework is finished, save for a few loose ends, and just yesterday I had my graduation ceremony.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it’s my hormones. Maybe it’s because I’m a big whiny Pisces. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the look of pride on my dad’s face as I walked down the aisle. But I cried. I never just cry, not on happy occasions. Like, I didn’t even cry on either of my wedding days. Something about this just felt so overwhelmingly right, though. Like I was finally where I was supposed to be this entire time, like my whole life led up to that moment.

And yet, I’m still mourning something. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s the finality of it all. This is the end of a chapter that took well over a third of my life. Maybe I’m sad I spent the whole of my youth studying when I could have been traveling or starting a family or running away to Nashville to play in some band that might actually become famous. Maybe I’m sad I’ll never know what the other paths would have looked like. I’m not a Sim. I don’t get another play-through. I devoted my life to learning the art of music therapy, and that’s the road I’m on.

It is disheartening to think I might never be a rock star or a mom or a free-spirited hippie living in a converted van. But then I think back to the look on my dad’s face yesterday, the majestic piano leitmotif my professor composed in my honor, and how it felt singing my favorite song lyrics of all time as part of my graduation speech — “Show love with no remorse.”

Music therapy is academia. It’s science. It’s art. But perhaps most importantly, it’s love. It’s love of all of those things, but above all else, it’s love of humanity. It’s taking a divine gift that was given to us — the gift of music — and using it as a tool to help and heal. Maybe I’ll never get to hold a child of my own. Maybe I’ll never get to revel in the spotlight of the biggest stadium. Maybe I will someday. But I know that I haven’t wasted my youth as a music therapy student, because this is what I was put on this planet to do. I was created to use my gift to leave the world a better place than the way I found it. It’s my God-given calling.

And for the first time, I’m exactly where I need to be.