131: 2.2 Control and lack thereof

Some emotional reactions are beyond explanation. I was 12, maybe 11 at the time. I was in the small room downstairs, a room that was mainly our toy and nap room when we were babies. A single room, with a window and an adjoining bathroom. A closet at the corner housing books for all ages and some albums that preserved the fading printed photos from different eras of my family’s life.  Digital music hadnt really caught on yet, and we had a shelf full of audio CDs. I picked one randomly and headed towards the radio. After placing the CD in the top compartment, I pressed play. The very first song was Pachebel’s infamous Canon in D.

The song opened with a strong violin presence, accompanied by the sultry sounds of cellos. Although I wasnt actively listening to classical music at the time, somehow I knew that this song had once played an important role in my life. The notes, the melody and the harmony; it was like the song brought an unknown memory within me to its surface.The emotions suddenly flooded in as the piece approached its middle cadence. Without reason or control, my chest tightened and tears streamed down my face. My stomach started to ache as I audibly sobbed into my hands. Minutes after, I was on the floor, having a full meltdown in the corner of the room alone. I remember thinking “What has gotten into me?” Till this day I haven’t fully figured it out.

After many failed attempts, I finally managed to calm myself down. Wiping away my tears and looking at my swollen eyes in the mirror, I wondered what possessed me to have such a reaction. It was like an out of body experience. Like something previously held under lock and key suddenly exploded without warning. At the time, I didnt even know the song’s name or its composer - I just knew that I had heard it before.

I confided in Mama about my experience and she told me that when I was a baby, she used to play that song, together with many other songs from the Baroque era for most hours in the day. She would play in when I was awake, asleep, eating, maybe pooping even. She thought that by playing those songs, I would become a calmer and smarter child. Without me being aware of it, that song accompanied me alot in my early years, and maybe a part of my brain had stored this audio memory unconsciously.

Makes me think how much of our actual selves are we actually aware of. Especially in the last few years, there has been a surge in popularity of self-love and self-discovery in culture. It has been said that no one knows you better than you. But experiences like the emotional meltdown I had makes me think that we actually dont really know much about ourselves.

Maybe what we know of our existence is only the tip of the iceberg. There are influences and experiences that we have gone through that we are unaware of, or have forgotten. There is so much that is not in our control. Like the country we grew up in, the family we have, the food you ate as a child, or like me, the songs you heard as a baby. Those experiences influenced you to become who you are today.

It is somewhat frightening that you might have little control of who you are, and in a sense who you will become. But at the same time, I think it is also liberating and humbling. Humbling to think you are not in this alone as your self, is an amalgamation of many different influences from others. And liberating that when things dont turn out the way you planned, you never had full control anyway. Maybe ocassional unexplained breakdowns are necessary to remind oneself that sometimes, it is okay not to be in control. Maybe its just part of being human.