#my brother and I entered a local singing contest years back (I wanna say I was 15 or 16)

[peaches2217]

I come from a family of singers, and while I didn’t inherit the Actually Good at Singing gene, I used to love singing anyway. I’ve always been an alto, and my deeper voice was always a point of pride for me! I was into musical theatre, and when I would actually be cast, I’d find as many loopholes as possible to sing lower than I was supposed to. I wanted to be a Broadway actress. But I wanted to play women’s and men’s roles. I wanted to be known as the woman who could be a man just as easily and just as flawlessly.

But after a, uh, particular incident at a singing contest, I realized just how much I actually sucked and swore off singing for the rest of my life; I’ve been slowly allowing myself to sing again through my twenties, but never where others can hear.

While my speaking voice hasn’t dropped as much since starting T, my singing voice has. I’ve been testing my low range by singing the opening of The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg and seeing how many notes I can actually hit, and I’ve been kinda dissatisfied, because I still can’t hit the bottom notes. But as of late I’ve found myself cranking off into musical theatre pieces whenever I’m alone and cleaning or driving or what have you, and the more I go through, the more I realize my voice is, at present, so much closer to the voice I always wanted growing up.

While cleaning the windows at work, I cranked off on the most hilariously passionately rendition of Who I’d Be, which has always been one of my favorites, but one I could never sing; it went too low, and raising the key took it too high outside of my range. Now? I can hit every last note. Not well, of course, but I never once struggled in the lows. Now I can’t stop singing it, because I’ve wanted to sing it since I was thirteen and now I finally can and I’m needlessly emotional over it.

I dunno. It’s just nice. This is the first time I’ve felt happy about my voice since I was in middle school, and it’s empowering in an odd sorta way.