Happy and Grateful

Today I am very happy and grateful.

First of all, today is 35 years without a drink (since "being on the wagon" is slang for being sober, I couldn't resist the graphic).

It's really hard to fathom. I drank heavily from the age of 18 through a few months past my 25th birthday (during what, if I were young now, would be called my "emerging adulthood").

Drinking wreaked havoc with every area of my life but I in some ways I don't think it did as much damage to me as a singer as the fact that I started smoking at age 14. I started smoking because I thought I was "hugely fat". I was not. I was five foot 6 and my weight fluctuated between 140 and 160. So, ok, at 160 I was too heavy but at 140-150 I wasn't even overweight and had what in the 1940s or 1950s would have been considered a sexy figure.

Ironically, it was not long after I started smoking that people began commenting on what an extraordinary voice I had. I sang in the soprano section of my glee club (because it was easy for me to sing a G or an A - still is, but not higher) and sounded like Julie Andrews with the volume ramped way up. I began to toy with the idea that I could be a singer, however I simply could not give up the demon weed. Not long after that I began drinking (and stuffing my face with just about anything else I could find - except LSD, which I had heard could make you crazy for life).

I stopped drinking a few months after my 25th birthday and about a year later stopped smoking (the first time). After that I started studying voice with the teacher I'm studying with today (before that I had done a brief stint as a chorister and cover for the lead contralto in a Gilbert & Sullivan troupe)and kept singing better and better over the next four years. I stopped at 30 (I've written quite a bit about this - my choice was based on a need for a more regular income, wanting to go to college at night, and my partner's dislike of my involvement with an avocational activity where there were too many straight men) and then went right back to smoking.

Fortunately, not for very long, since a woman who was my age (32) had died of lung cancer, which scared me. Also, just as I was told that "dykes don't sing opera" I was also told that "self-loving dykes don't smoke", which, I guess, helped. Although I never went back to singing - not until I was 54.

Although I wanted to smoke every single day up until I began singing again, fortunately, I have never wanted to drink after about the first year.

No matter how much I kvetch, I am very blessed. I am extremely healthy for someone of 60, and, at the same weight and height I was at 12, where I was teased for being fat, I am considered "curvy and trim" compared to most women my age. I have someone who adores me, even though she lives with many mental and physical (and financial) challenges, and the privilege of being able to work freelance and get health insurance for my former employer, who considers me a "retiree".

And I'm singing better and better. Yes, I often feel envious, sad, and self-hating because I buckled under to pressure and never went back to singing until I was seduced into it by The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, but I have what I have now. I am getting to learn one of my dream roles (Amneris) and even if I will probably never have the stamina (or a decent C flat) to sing the whole opera I can sing various scenes in concerts, which I am signed up to do over the next year.

While we're on that subject, I had a really good runthrough of the duet yesterday, beginning with "L'abborita rival". Yes, singing that upward progression on one breath with my mouth closed at the beginning, is the key.

Then I went with my partner to see My Dog Tulip and came back to her house to see our beloved Dachshund, who is getting better every day!