Why I Have Childhood Memory Loss and Impeccable Posture Due to Traumatizing Piano Lessons
“I can’t really remember anything from like ages 5-15”
May 17, 2021
By: Julia Zhen
When I was only 5 years-old I started taking private piano lessons, but this was not my choice. When my parents immigrated from China eight years prior, they knew they wanted their children to learn instruments at a young age. Little did they know, the pressure of piano recitals, festivals, and competitions would cause me to absolutely crumble mentally. Who would’ve thought that forcing a child to attend thousands of dollars worth of private lessons and then forcing them to memorize 8 pages of sheet music to perform for judges at competitions would put an unnecessary amount of pressure on them? Sure, I have memory loss from those high stress times, but at least my posture is impeccable.
Now that I’m 27, I can’t really remember anything from like ages 5-15, but I still have bouts of amnesia where I completely forget where I am. I could be sitting at my desk working, but in my head I wake-up in the backseat of the family’s old 2003 maroon Toyota Camry. All I see is the blue sky passing by through the window and the sound of a metronome ticking in allegretto, which usually in my daydreams is 98 BPM, but at night it gets up to 109 BPM. It’s horrifying. When I come-to, I’m usually on the floor, but at least I don’t have to ever clip my fingernails because I chewed them all off when I was 7.
My therapist believes the years of crying over subpar piano recitals and the pressure to perform memorized pieces at state-wide piano competitions affected my ability to cope during times of high stress in her adulthood. To this day, I still sleepwalk at night and walk directly to the back entrance of my piano teacher’s old home. The journey is 6 miles and requires 15 minutes on the freeway, and when I wake up at her house, I always keep a spare bike so I can just bike home. But hey! My cardio endurance is phenomenal.
The most embarrassing ailment that I have from this childhood trauma is whenever I would perform poorly at piano recitals, I would immediately stuff my face afterwards during refreshments. My go-to was Brisk Iced Tea and those grocery store brand sugar cookies that are super controversial. Now, when I perform poorly during a moment of high stakes, like when I think I’ve failed in bed with any past sexual partners, I can immediately taste aspartame and corn syrup in my mouth like a Pavlovian dog. To this day, I can still blind taste Yellow 4 and Lake 6 in any snack.
