Picking up from last time –
[The disclaimer remains the same, that much of this is from the original post, but I’ve woven in many more details about sexual assault guy (coming up in the story soon), whereas before, in the original posting, I was too scared/in denial to admit (espeeeeecially publicly) what was going on.]
So, after the rough road of the first assignment, I was procrastinating on the second one.
My brain just thought, “We [my 2nd composer partner and I] will do it when it gets closer. And there will be less time to fight.” [Especially since I had no time available in my life with the whole moving across the country on a whim thing.]
But(!) This composer was lovely – which I found out super late (since I waited so long), which was a real bummer. I missed out on what could’ve been a good experience. And of course, working on it with less than 48 hours to spare, we didn’t have a magical song that was hit out of the park or anything. So, class wasn’t going super well.
Interpersonal relationships weren’t going well either (since the first guy and I didn’t work all that great together, and the second guy had every reason to be mad at me for procrastinating on our song).
(And I was exhausted about 100% of the time.)
For my third assignment, I was assigned to one of the most brilliant people in the class. She had a tremendous idea. It went super well. I wasn’t sure if maybe, just maybe, the class would turn around… But it was around that time that I was sexually assaulted by somebody at school (more than once, as I was in what grew to be a very crummy, abusive relationship with him). [Aye aye aye, what a bummer complaining post, right? *Gulp*]
Back then [and at the original posting of this post (as back in February 2016 (when I originally write these) that abusive relationship was going strong and dangerously)], I didn’t tell anybody that happened.
But I did become very agitated and on edge (in general, in life). I stopped sleeping. I started to really have a lot of issues – which, of course, made things reeeeeeeeally hard to connect with my fourth assignment partner (and any other human in general, but of course someone you’re working with closely).
[And it didn’t help that I was trying so hard to please sexual assault guy at this point, and stay out of “trouble” with him that it was hard for my 4th collaborator to be able to truly lean on me/even make times I’d really commit to, because I always felt at the beck and call of the man I was in an abusive relationship with. (And yes, of course I’m super embarrassed that I let that affect my work in BMI.]
Suffice it to say, the song (and collaboration) didn’t go neeeeeeearly as well as I wanted…
I guess… I don’t even know if this is the right analogy… it had sort of felt like I was hanging by a ledge at BMI, and somehow I (with the help of my 3rd composer) had started by pull myself up, and then sexual assault guy came over and ripped my hand off the ledge (kinda… I don’t always know what I’m saying, but anyway…)
I had such sad, false hope that things would turn around right before I got involved heavily in that abusive relationship (things were percolating with sexual assault guy even during the writing of the brilliant 3rd song (and maybe even a little but before) but I really got in trouble, I’d say, right around the time going into the 4th song…
So, yeah, a real drop from all this hope after #3 to things getting immensely worse very shortly after. And then before I even totally completed my 5th assignment, I was already out of the class.
…I hated seeing sexual assault guy’s face there. I was vomiting in the bathroom during the break one night because of how he had treated me on a recent night, and how sick it was making me. He felt inescapable. (He kiiiiinda was in some ways.)
So, ultimately, I left.
I would say that’s the main gist of the story. (The “gist” haha, as if I didn’t just do multiple posts with tons of words. But you get what I’m saying…)
So, that’s the overarching thing. There are other small details here and there.
E.g. even though my first song didn’t go well, the performance did. Even my partner (with whom I didn’t agree on anything else) was happy I performed it. As we were a little nervous going into it, one thing he very nicely told me was “Well, the one thing we have is that you are a fantastic performer and you will sell our song.”
[And when someone who has been more than happy to share big, opposing opinions on everything else says that, I have no reason not to believe him. So, that felt really good.]
So, maybe I could’ve at least been saved by being a good performer in the class. But even that slipped away little by little… For instance, someone asked me to sing as Blanche in their streetcar song, but I didn’t see their message (because they asked me on a personal Facebook profile check for that all intents and purposes, I basically don’t check).
And missing out on that felt like missing out on the genesis of some other possible opportunities. (I mean, maybe not. But I definitely think it would’ve helped me to sing as much as possible, and that didn’t totally happen…)
I also had old details in here about as things went more and more poorly, I started sitting further back in the room, which I think did physically signify something, but that’s just me kind of circling all the tiny details I cared too much(?) about.
But yeah, the point is, I think we’ve pretty much covered all the pertinent details. I don’t know if all this makes sense. It was just kind of a perfect storm of everything going not great. And I’m sad with the way it worked out.
[But as of the fall of 2017, I returned… (So, we’ll see!)]
[For more about my experience with the BMI workshop, you can go here.]
[And for more posts on sexual assault, you can go here.]