You don’t know me, but you probably know women like me. Years ago we would have been called wallflowers and then a few years later painfully shy. These days we may fly under the flag of introvert, but ever since I saw these bubbly blondes on a morning news show call themselves “introverts” I’ve had to reconsider the appellation because those women and me are not the same at all. I could never get in front of a camera with a live audience while also knowing that morning viewers were tuning in to watch me. The only way you might get me to do something like that is if I wasn’t me at all, which is exactly why several nights a week, I am not me.
Did I lose you? Confuse you? Hang on.
First, let me share with you the fact that I always dreamed of being a singer. Now, I know that’s pretty common. What kid doesn’t want to grow up to be a rock star or a rapper or a country music maker? My voice was always pretty good. In high school I tried out for the acapella group, but when they told me I had to sing a solo, I smiled and melted into the floorboards. I did join glee club and my glee club director encouraged me to try out for a solo from Les Miserables. When I began singing, my face turned fiery red as well as felt like it was on fire, my voice cracked and then just faded away and immediately thereafter so did I.
“We just need to infuse you with confidence,” he said to me. That didn’t happen nor did he ever encourage me to try out for a solo again.
I learned to play the guitar from youtube videos and even made a few videos of my own employing a Sia-like look. I scored some fans, but was mostly called a copycat, because there is only one Sia. But the experience taught me one valuable thing: I wasn’t afraid of singing in front of people if I wasn’t myself. So I became the best not-me that I could be.
Several nights a week mousy brown-haired Lucy Kilgore from Gunston Cove becomes cowboy boot-wearing, sexy blonde Lacey Cantrell from Wheeling, West Virginia and that’s just the beginning of the story. My motto: Never Give Up.
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Sascha Darlington 5/27/2017
Let’s sia where this leads… 🙂
ha…I am slow today…thought you made a typo…I sia you didn’t.
I really like this!!! I have often wanted to ‘reinvent’ myself for the purpose of wanting to promote my writing & my art. The very thought that I could be someone totally different, more like the ‘ME’ I wished I really was. Oh, it intrigued me!! I am glad that you were able to find this path to essentially live outside of yourself, and follow some dreams!!! Best of continued luck to you!!
Thank you. After such glowing support, I hate to say that this is fiction. However, I do think that each day we’re given an opportunity to reinvent ourselves and follow our dreams, which is what I do when I write fiction. Sometimes the characters do the things I would like to do. 🙂
Well, fiction or reality- awesome work!:) keep it up!!