To really know me, is to know that I’m deeply connected to music. No, I’m not a musician (no classical training at Julliard or deep understanding of the rhythms and notes that comprise musical refrains). But music and I have this complicated, truly intertwined relationship that can’t be explained. I know the lyrics, I feel the beats, I live the melodies. I hold my breath at falsetto highs, exhale with smooth jazzy notes, nod at a good riff, and sentence words that reach my soul to life on repeat.

This past year though, for some reason, I just wasn’t able to find the music in myself. I still enjoyed listening to music, I would still sing along to songs in the car, bounce to a good beat, but the connection wasn’t there. Music and I were in a slump, a separation of sorts. One of those situations in a relationship where you’re going through the motions for the sake of keeping up appearances. I wasn’t even able to bring the songs that I’ve connected to most to my mind. Forget bathing myself in sweet melodies for an afternoon or having personal dance parties in my room during a lazy evening.

So, sitting in a Starbucks early one December morning, I was surprised to feel a spark that I hadn’t felt in quite awhile. Jill Scott’s A Long Walk somehow popped up on the speaker (a happy break from the holiday music that had become the new normal for the season – don’t get me started). Something jumped within me. We made a connection. Music and I reintroduced ourselves that morning.

I must admit, I was getting worried. I was struggling. I’d find myself at gatherings with friends, where the centerpiece of the event would be listening to amazing music, wanting to stand across the room with my back to the speaker, but forcing myself to sit face to face with it, feigning excitement and enjoyment. I would listen to friends excitedly describe their current playlists and marathon nights of swimming in the deep end of beloved songs of long ago and contemporary melodic flirtations. I would smile and ask to hear clips, knowing that the silent treatment that music and I were really giving each other would resume as soon as we were alone.

Public Radio became my station of choice with its endless interviews and discussions of current events. I would tolerate the brief musical interludes that emphasized some important point from each episode or introduced the next show. Music and I were headed for ultimate divorce on the basis of irreconcilable differences. The hard part is that I didn’t know why.

But that morning, music and I started to come to an understanding.

We’re rebuilding our relationship day by day now, note by note. I can’t say that we are totally back to what we were, but sometimes, what a relationship will become, can be better than what it once was.

“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.” ― William Shakespeare