It's okay not to go back.

Have you ever had a food that you loved as a kid but you ate so much of it that you can't bear to eat it ever again?

That's me. Although it's not food I'm talking about, it's music.

I've always been very musical. As a wee girl at the age of 5, I'd be composing my own tunes and picking up songs off the radio and recreating them on my keyboard. Nobody taught me how to do it...it just happened naturally. Any instrument I came in to contact with, it seemed to come together under my fingers. It just felt...right.

It's not surprising that years later I went on to study classical music at university and spent most of my free time attending concerts and going to choir/band/orchestra/conducting practise.. It was my whole life and I loved it! It wasn't an easy life though. I had constant back troubles from playing my instrument for hours every day, I never seemed to have enough time in the day to fit all my practise in and I found the pressure of frequent concerts, performance classes and exams a bit too much sometimes.

As time went on, I began to question if I was on the right path and felt I had hit a dead end. Somehow I seemed to have run out of talent..it's the only way I can describe it. I lost form rapidly and by the end of my final year everything collapsed.
The pursuit of perfection was impossible and eventually I burnt out. I felt sickened, embarrassed and somehow that I had failed. Recovering in hospital afterwards I couldn't bear to listen to classical music. It reminded me of everything I had lost. I didn't want anything more to do with music.

What led up to the breakdown was never investigated, although a doctor rather stupidly told me it was music that had caused all my problems... I believe it was far more complicated than that - many things contributed, a lot of which I wasn't able to comprehend until much later. 

That was nearly 15 years ago, and I still find the whole 'music thing' incredibly painful.
I picked up a church anthem book the other day, and it felt like I had come home. This was the real me...I revelled in the melodies and harmonies and the memories I had in singing them, but then I shut the book as I was starting to get uneasy...even just writing about it makes my throat burn and my eyes sting..

Is it possible to go back after burnout? I've tried once or twice in the past and I could feel myself going down the old perfectionist route again.
Is it possible I could retrain my thought patterns to not have all the old negative associations? I probably could, but it would take years and years of hard work.
It's not just all the painful stuff going on from the past, but music isn't to me what it once was.. It's just not fun any more and I get very little pleasure from it.

I've been tortured by feelings for a long time that I ought to go back because it's a shame to waste my gift, but do I really want to go back? Hum...well, if I'm totally honest, No. (Remember that food you once loved as a kid but are repulsed by it now?)

I very rarely tell people about my musical past. In days gone by when I mentioned it, I was usually asked to give a demo... Come on! Play us a wee tune or Sing us a song. After telling them I hadn't played in a long time and very rusty and probably not very good either, I got all the crap about being too modest etc etc... (There are only so many ways you can graciously refuse before you snap and say something rude!) In the beginning I did occasionally oblige them, and then came the inevitable "Oh....I see, yes, you are out of practise" (Well I did tell you I was didn't I?!) 
These days it's much easier not to say anything at all.

I do feel rather sad about the whole music thing though...it seems a shame to let that ability go to waste. All the stuff I'm doing now? Somehow it doesn't feel quite right.
Have you ever heard someone 'coming out' for the first time and describing how they've found a part of themselves that seemed to be missing?
In a way, I feel the same.. There's this whole side of me, the musical side, that I have been suppressing all these years..

But maybe its okay not to go back. I read something on the topic a few days ago, and a sentence at the end jumped out at me which said that it was okay to give myself permission to quit. It helped put the "should I, shouldn't I" debate to rest.

It's okay to just shut that book and move on. There are some parts of music I feel fine with, like composing, analysing and making up rude lyrics to well-known songs, and I'll still dabble with those from time to time, but I can't deny music was a huge part of my life.

Giving myself Permission to Quit music makes me feel at ease with the past. I used to call myself a 'Failed Musician', but many people have left music and never gone back. I may go back one day, or I may not, but I will stop beating myself up about it.

I'm an 'All or Nothing' type of person and often have 'little burnouts' where I jump enthusiastically into a project and end up dropping it a few weeks later having exhausted that enthusiasm. 
One of the biggest lessons I'm learning is to care a little less about what I'm doing and not taking the whole thing so seriously.