I’ve lost my voice a few times over the years. Not so much my singing voice — although I’ve done that, too, resulting in disorienting days filled with hot honey/lemon tea and a rudimentary charades talent getting me by. It wasn’t pretty.

I’m talking about times I’ve more accurately lost my “sing.” There was a blip moving from high school to college. I was a high school singer talent that didn’t translate to college a cappella groups. Don’t get me wrong, I tried out, but they politely declined and we kept it moving. The next five years were filled with a recreational, sing along to the radio, bounce at the concert kind of music life.

When BrightSide and I married and moved to St. Louis I joined the church choir. I liked the structure. Having sheet music in my hands again was fun, challenging, occasionally infuriating but overall good for me. Except for that time I sang the “Hallelujah Chorus” as a second soprano without eating enough beforehand. Nothing screams look out below like a sharp blood sugar drop and lightheadedness from all the high notes. Yikes.

There were other fits and starts, periods when I actively pursued singing and times when it went onto the back burner. The strangest moment of all, though, was when I realized I’d lost singing altogether.

There was life stress and parenting stress and health stress too. Trump was in his first term in office and then covid showed up, lockdown commenced, and life as we knew it turned on its head. I can’t say for sure how long I was in that no man’s land…I just remember one day getting in my car for a doctor’s appointment in Greensboro and something snapped. Everything was wrong and raw and off kilter in an uncomfortable way; that’s when my brain finally jumped in with YOU DUMMY, YOU DON’T SING ANYMORE.

I’d forgotten the joy. Not from a great performance or a complicated piece, but the joy that swells up when you hear a piece of music and the notes swell up and out from within.

I turned off NPR, loaded up my Spotify list, and told myself it was my whole damn job to sing myself down the interstate. That’s when I remembered. I sang at the top of my lungs the entire way. I’m quite sure I looked more than a little unstable but it worked; by the time I climbed out of my car I felt lighter. Not brighter, exactly, things were still hard…but less heavy. And that was enough.

Now I have singing dates for myself. If I’ve gone too long, if I’m feeling a little too overwhelmed or if the stress is rolling particularly hard that day you’ll find me belting out songs. In the bathroom, in my car, in the kitchen. Gotta love a good dopamine hit.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “sing.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!