I can’t say exactly when it started. There wasn’t a dramatic moment, no sudden collapse on stage. Just a small, persistent wobble. A phrase that wouldn’t settle. A note that kept drifting out of tune. I noticed it once, then again, and again. And soon, I couldn’t not notice it.
At first, I brushed it off—maybe I was tired. Maybe it was nerves, or the room, or something I ate. But it didn’t go away. It lingered. It embedded itself in my awareness like a splinter I couldn’t reach.
And then the questions began.
What’s wrong with my technique?
Am I doing something differently?
Why can’t I control it?
What is this?
I started recording myself obsessively, scanning for evidence of improvement—or decline. Each listen brought more dread. I could hear the instability, and I had no explanation for it. I didn’t feel tired. I wasn’t singing “wrong.” But something had shifted, and I couldn’t name it.
When I brought it to teachers, I hoped for reassurance. Some did try. But others offered technical diagnoses that didn’t sit right. “You’re engaging too much weight.” “It’s probably just tension.” “You just need to sort it out.”
I took it all in. I tried everything. But the more I focused on correcting it, the worse it seemed to get. The deeper the shame sank in.
The wobble wasn’t just in my voice—it was in me.
My sense of safety. My identity. My trust in my own body.
I felt unstable. Unmoored.
No one said it out loud, but I heard it anyway:
You’re not good enough anymore.
Eventually, I stopped performing.
I didn’t make a formal announcement.
I just faded out.
The joy I used to feel on stage was gone, replaced by dread and embarrassment. I couldn’t bear the thought of people hearing my voice and hearing what I heard—something broken, something wrong.
What surprised me most was how quietly it all happened.
Not the wobble itself, but the retreat.
One day I was a singer. The next, I was someone who used to sing.
There is a particular kind of silence that comes from shame.
It isn’t peaceful. It’s full of static.
It’s the silence of “What happened to me?”
The silence of “What did I do wrong?”
In the world of singing, where our bodies are our instruments—where vulnerability is baked into every note—this kind of silence can feel like exile.
You’re still in the room, still breathing, still technically able to sing—but some part of you has gone quiet.
Not just the sound, but the self that once trusted the voice to show up.
You become watchful. Hesitant.
You rehearse safety instead of freedom.
And maybe, like I did, you start to disappear—not all at once, but quietly, imperceptibly—until singing feels like something that happened to someone else.
There was no clean path “back.”
In truth, there was no going back at all.
I didn’t relearn how to sing—I just kept singing. Carefully. Quietly. Then, gradually, with more curiosity than fear.
My voice still fluctuates. Some days it feels grounded and clear; other days, it doesn’t. But I’ve started to notice those changes with less panic and more tenderness.
These fluctuations mirror something in me—
my humanness,
my rhythms,
my own imperfect aliveness.
There is no endpoint, only a continued relationship.
And that, I’m learning, is enough.
If you’re reading this and you’ve felt that quiet dread—that sense of betrayal, confusion, or shame in your own voice—you’re not alone.
There’s no single way to move through it.
But sometimes it starts with the smallest sound.
A sigh. A hum. A whisper made just for you.
Not to prove you’re better. Not to prove you’re fixed.
Just to remind you:
You are still here.
And you still have the right to sing.
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