Being A Musician - Part 2

                                                      

I hope you all are doing well! I have been working at my dads office this past week, assisting him while his assistant is out! I will be working there until we leave for Dollywood at the end of May! So it's been kinda busy around here ... but good busy! How have you all been?

This is part two of my mini series of Being A Musician. If you happened to miss last week's blog, all you have to do is click right here. This week’s blog is all about the ways I tried to escape being a musician.

So I tried to escape being a musician three ways...

1. Anger 

2. Anorexia

3. Bulimia 

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that I had eating disorders because I had to be a musician. I have said this before and I’ll say it again, there were so many different reasons as to why I struggled with eating disorders. But this blog is about the music side of my life and it is about this one aspect as to why I struggled with eating disorders.

Ok, number one. Anger. In 2010 through 2011 I became very dark and very angry. I even had my first bout of anorexia. I started restricting food and I became so angry with life. Part of my love language is working on projects with my dad...I have loved it ever since I could follow my dad’s footsteps. But now when we would work on projects I became angry, and annoyed, and I started dreading having to do these projects. Part of the reason was because I wasn’t eating enough and so I had low blood sugar and I didn’t have enough fuel to get me through these projects.  

Not only was that area affected, I was angry anytime we had quartet practice or angry doing any kind of performing. The best way to describe it is that my eyes became dark and my smile was gone. I actually don’t even remember being that angry, but my mom said I would spend hours in my room and I would be just so angry. Another example was when we went to the music camp we went to for years, I had to write “smile” on the top of all my music in the orchestra because I just didn’t smile anymore. I was angry and dark. Then I took that angry energy and used it to start restricting my food. 

I really think I was angry because I had to be a musician. That is what drove it but even beneath that...the very root of why I was angry, was because God called me to be a musician. I hated that fact. I felt so ill equipped at having to be a musician, I was so unnatural for that lifestyle and yet I couldn’t get out of it. So, I threw a temper tantrum...that’s basically exactly what I did! Sounds silly, but that’s what happened. I took control of my life by restricting food and becoming angry...at everything.

So moving along to 2012, we moved to Nashville for our music. Ok, this is when my life really started to fall out of control. Although, in the depths of my heart...I knew we needed to go to Nashville. I knew God was calling us to go, so in a weird way I had a peace in my heart about the whole thing. That was from the Lord because at the same time, I was storing up hurt in my heart and that hurt would later be some of the fuel that drove my eating disorder. 

Food became my control, my comfort and my friend. See, we moved away from my home and my dad, all to pursue our music. I was a homebody, a daddy’s girl and I didn’t want to be a musician. So like I said, food became my control and my everything. It was the one thing that could come with me no matter where we were.

I was slowly getting sicker and sicker with food until October of 2013 it finally hit me that I was anorexic. It was like I just knew that I was anorexic. I restricted more and more and well, it went on for years. In 2015 it finally got so bad that I ended up having to go to a treatment center. 

Why was anorexia a way of fighting back at God because I had to do music? Well, I was angry at God for making me do music so a way for me to fight back was controlling my body in a way that I wanted to. I was going to eat however I wanted and whatever I wanted. I was always scared of being fat so now that I was in a profession that looks at the outward appearance, and I was in this profession against my will...then by all means I was going to make sure I was going to stand out by being the thinnest. After all, that is what is praised in the world we live in...being thin. So I would be thin and I would not only be thin, but I'd be the thinnest amongst my sisters. It was a way that I could have my hands on something tangible in my life because at this point God was doing what He wanted with my life and I hated that. I wanted the control, I wanted my life my way. 

When you think about it, that is the human nature. We don’t want our life run by someone else, we want our life run by the way we want to run our life. But that’s not possible. Even if you don't believe in God, how often do things happen in your life that you can’t control? You get a flat tire, you have to go out to dinner unexpectedly, or you have a family member die of an illness. Unexpected things happen in our life all the time and how we react to these uncontrollable things shows what we believe in God and how we live out our life. 

I was in a job that I hated and a job I had to be in so I reacted with anorexia. But years later I eventually started surrendering my anorexia to the Lord because I knew that at the root of my anorexia...if I wanted to recover I was going to have to surrender everything before the Lord. Which meant my anorexia. Anorexia is a control issue. Yes it is a mental disorder but I had gotten help for the mental side of things. I was now having to get to the root of my anorexia and at the root of it is the fact that I had to surrender my eating disorder to the Lord. So I started surrendering and I started gaining weight and before I knew it, I found myself in a three year battle with bulimia. A lot happened in between but remember, this is all about the music side of my journey. 

So with bulimia, I traded one disorder for another. It was almost like I gave anorexia to the Lord, and while letting go with one hand I grabbed on to something very similar to what I was just holding onto...just in complete opposite form.

Bulimia was similarly driven as anorexia was. Oddly enough, when it came to music, I would restrict any time we had to do anything with music and then as soon as we were done with whatever it may be: performing, music Mondays, going live on social media...as soon as we were done...I would go and binge. I could go to my room and I would have my food and everything was alright in the world. I was still doing music....but I was able to still have my control, my safe spot and my hands on something physical that could comfort me after the stress of doing music. 

As I have said, music is not my natural job. But God called me to it and so I had to do it but the stress that comes with music is sometimes overwhelming. I get so stressed with playing violin and performing, making sure I remember my parts and words and notes...pretty much all of it stresses me out. And so food was my reward when I was done. Food was always there for me after I got off stage. 

But when I lived life like that, deep in my heart I wasn’t happy. I wasn't safe. I wasn’t ok...food was somehow making things worse. Even though I didn't see it at the time. I was gaining weight and I was binging and my body was getting worn out from the restricting and binging that came with bulimia. There is a certain amount of physical shape you have to be in when you are a performer because when you sing….your body is the instrument. My body was way out of control physically, emotionally and spiritually. And you can’t perform well when one is out of whack and you definitely can’t perform well when all three of those things are out of control. You can fake it as a performer because it’s like acting...but the toll it takes on your body to do that is extreme and in the long run...it’s unattainable. You can’t keep faking it. I couldn’t keep hiding mine. Next week you will find out how all of this journey, me being a musician and my eating disorders all came to a head and how it all came to a 180 degree turn in healing.

~ Natalie