I always said I’d be a music therapist even if it killed me.
To be honest, it almost did.
And I’m still not a music therapist. But I’m okay.
It’s been about a week and a half since I put in my two weeks at my internship. It feels surreal. It still is hitting me that the future I planned so carefully for myself isn’t coming to fruition. I had no backup plan. Being a music therapist was the only path I saw for myself, and the yellow brick road to the MT-BC title was ripped out from under my feet.
I was going to be a music therapist if it killed me. But what good is a dead music therapist?
I came home from work every day crying because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. It was like playing whack-a-mole with my weaknesses — I’d knock one out only to have three more pop up in its place. “You’re not empathetic enough.” “You can’t read people well enough to be a therapist.” “Feedback goes over your head — or maybe you’re too stubborn to listen to it.” “Oops, you shouldn’t have said that in a session.“ And the one that caused me to drop everything and leave:
“You’re causing more harm than you’re helping.”
Suddenly, I felt like the mole getting whacked.
I was so distraught, for a moment I considered driving my car off the bridge and into the fucking river. Don’t call the psych ward on me — I’m too scared of death to actually act on anything. But the fact that the thought even occurred was my signal that maybe this wasn’t right for me.
I blame a lot of my failings on my particular brand of neurospiciness. A lot of times it felt like my supervisors were speaking another language, and my clients were speaking a completely different language, and I was just this alien being trying to simultaneously decode the feedback I was getting and figure out how to react to what was happening in session in real time without a guidebook or translator. It became very draining for me, to the point where I couldn’t give it my all anymore and I was flailing.
There are neurodivergent music therapists — I’m friends with a handful I could name right here. But my brain just isn’t wired in a way that works well with the clinical mindset you need to be a music therapist, and I’m coming to terms with that. All of the academic papers I’ve written and scholarship-winning presentations I’ve put together and wordy books I’ve read couldn’t have prepared me for the work I had to do.
And that’s okay. Maybe I’m meant for something else.
I wish I hadn’t wasted all of my adult life (and thousands of dollars) on a career that ultimately ended up not being a good fit for me, but they say nothing that leads you to the path you should be on is a waste of time. Perhaps this twist in my story will take me to exactly where I need to be, and if that’s the case, I don’t regret a thing.
As of writing, I’m figuring out my next steps. My dream was to open a recording studio for people of all ages and abilities, but I don’t need some lofty certification to do that. I could start that studio without the MT-BC title, damn it, and just not call it music therapy. It’ll be my own thing. Sometimes when the path to what you want crumbles, you carve out your own path. And that’s exactly what I plan to do in my own time. In the meantime, I’ll fine tune my music production skills and probably teach guitar lessons for a living, at least for a while.
It’s funny, I’m writing this in a little artsy coffeeshop in South Bend, Indiana that has a piano for anyone to play. I sat down at the bench and just played my heart out for the first time in a long time, and it was freeing. There were no expectations, no degree to earn, no supervisors to impress. It was just me and the music (and the room full of coffee-drinking patrons minding their own business). After a while, a little girl came up to me and told me she liked my playing. I invited her to sit with me and I showed her how to play a basic chord, and her face just lit up. As she left, I smiled to myself. That special little moment didn’t need a degree or a certification to happen. It just needed the genuine human connection only music can create, and nothing can take that away from me.
JESSA JOYCE 