Memoire (BU Assignment)

The weight in my hands felt foreign as I was handed the shiny black microphone, and I was momentarily lost in fascination with the object I had always handled so naturally. I had been using microphones while singing and performing since I was ten years old. But on this particular night, something was different. I was holding a microphone in front of people because I had volunteered to be the performer, without them volunteering to be my audience. It was a bold move of confidence and vulnerability I had never before attempted, and the microphone grew heavier by the second.

The Senior Life Night was the beginning of the end. It was held on a Sunday night in late July of the summer before college, a time of celebration amidst bittersweet farewells. I had become involved in St. Mary’s Lifeteen, a Catholic youth group program, towards the middle of my sophomore year of high school. As a popular and well-known program, it served as a great way to meet people while strengthening one’s faith. A group of over one hundred teens in the Dedham area of Massachusetts gathered once a week for Sunday mass, as well as myriad recreational activities, semi-formal dances, community service trips, and retreats. This particular Sunday was a sendoff for the seniors who would leave for college in a month. My graduating class was the largest the program had ever seen, numbering almost half of those involved, and so on this Senior Night the room was crowded and buzzing with excitement. More parents volunteered to help out than ever before. A Dedham Times photographer could be seen weaving through the crowd, snapping photos for the paper, and prying quote-worthy statements from each individual in attendance. For the occasion, the senior boys were dressed in shirts and ties and stood so tall and stately that they seemed to mature before my eyes. The girls sashayed around in skirts, sundresses, and heels, blossoming in excitement and overcome with sentimentality. As was the tradition for the past eight years, there was a picture slideshow of memories we experienced the past four years. Smiling faces of teens with arms around each other in perfect picture poses as well as countless actions shots of different activities and candid photos that triggered roars of laughter were projected onto a giant screen while sentimental songs played, and many onlookers could be seen wiping tears. The lyrics to one song, “Good Riddance” by Green Day, particularly brought about audible sobs in the audience as the melody played, “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right, I hope you had the time of your life.” I sat next to my close friend Leah, an energetic blonde notorious for her radiant smile. We at first exchanged expressions of both sadness and nostalgia as the pictures of the time of our lives breezed past, until I slowly realized something missing. I felt my face dissolve into a puzzled frown, and all nostalgia evaporated.

After the slideshow came the traditional Senior Talks. The parents, families, program leaders, and remaining Lifeteen community filtered into the gym as one by one each senior would get up on stage with either a prepared speech, a poem, or a simple statement about what Lifeteen meant to him or her. Most of the girls brought up memories with their particular group of friends, sobbing through the presentation and apologizing for not being able to hold it together. The boys were more composed, but equally sentimental about their memories of the past four years. Each stated that they were changed by the amazing experience of Lifeteen, whether through their friends or some newfound faith. Everyone clapped after each speaker, everyone laughed, everyone cried.

I did not plan a speech or presentation of any kind. I had not even planned on attending the Senior Lifenight, since I had been at a dance practice I believed would keep me from the event. When I realized I would have just enough time to make the six o’clock mass, I decided it was better to go in the jeans, flip flops, ponytail, and t-shirt I was wearing than not at all. As the presentation wore on, however, I deeply regretted the decision. I was not in the slideshow. Picture after picture breezed by of events I attended and activities in which I participated, and yet there was no memory of me on the screen. As the shout-outs and speeches wore on, it seemed there was no memory of me at Lifeteen at all.

I had begun to attend Lifeteen activities in a particularly low period of my life, in the unstable stage of a sudden neuromuscular disease that rampaged my life and my self-esteem. Freshman year of high school, my muscles failed one area at a time. The first strange symptoms were double vision and facial muscle failure. When the symptoms became generalized, I was first devastated to lose Irish step dancing, singing, and other regular activity, and eventually found it impossible to climb stairs or lift my arms. After two surgeries, several treatments and medications, and still persistent muscle fatigue, I lost my confidence and optimism. I turned to Lifeteen to find something bigger, to attempt to restore myself while unable to do so physically. For four years I gradually progressed towards remission, and by senior year I was back dancing, singing, performing, and most importantly, smiling. But those years of recovery were slow, and without confidence I had little ability to make friends as I normally would. Unlike the other aspects of my life, such as singing and Irish dance, at Lifeteen I was always a quiet, anonymous individual who never made much of an impact, despite my presence at all of the Lifeteen events. Though my closest friends mattered more to me than popularity, I realized I never gave back to the program or the people who helped me by showing them who I really am.

So while the senior class delivered their reminiscences, I thought about what it was I wanted everyone to know about me that for three years I was never brave enough to show. The solution dawned on me, and terrified me, as the speeches were wrapping up. I never mustered the confidence or courage to share with anyone there my passion for singing. I had never felt I was an important enough member of the community to reveal this part of myself. I turned and whispered to Leah my strange idea, my voice shaking. Despite hopes that she would save me by turning me down, I watched as my most supportive and enthusiastic friend’s face lit up. She gripped my hands and looking deliberately into my eyes, she firmly whispered, “Do it.”
I shook my head, which had begun to feel strangely detached. “It would be so random. No one’s ever done it before, no one cares…never mind. I was just thinking, but I can’t, not here…” I trailed off as Leah’s exuberant face again met my gaze and she whispered, “Do it. Do it. You have to, Eileen. They need you, Eileen.”
I saw Leah, but I had the most surreal feeling that it wasn’t Leah’s urging I was hearing. I forgot to breathe. Applause sounded for the last speaker, who sauntered back to his seat receiving high fives from all of his friends.

The head of the Lifeteen program, Jason, peered out over the audience, squinting in the spotlight. He called for anyone else who wanted to speak. Last chance. A thousand voices in my head screamed in protest, but one was louder.

“Can… can I go?” I croaked. Jason did not hear me, but several in front of me turned in surprise. What’s that girl’s name again? Somehow, despite a complete loss of feeling in my legs, I stood. “I have to go, Jason.” Now the entire room had my attention. There were about one hundred and fifty people present, watching, as I flip-flopped my way to the stage in my t-shirt and jeans.

As I grasped the microphone that felt increasingly like a twenty-five pound weight, I looked out for a brief second into the audience. I could see nothing but the spotlight. No one was there, but the urging, “They need you.” I exhaled, and stepped into myself at last.

“As you can probably tell,” I began, “I had nothing planned for tonight.” Titters of encouraging laughter flickered in the dark abyss. “I tried to think of the words to say to encompass what Lifeteen has been for me, how very much everyone here has given me, but nothing seemed to do it justice. Nothing could. So rather than stumble through my own insufficient words, I thought I’d leave them up to Disney.”

More laughter, and a handful of claps. As my eyes adjusted I could see more clearly, but still the audience was a faceless mass, and the room full of people seemed as one entity. As feeling rushed back into my body, so did the awareness of my thundering heartbeat. But my performance face was on, and I smiled as if what I was doing was with ease.

“I know this is going to seem really different, because I’m pretty sure no one has ever done this, and most people wouldn’t… ever. But I really feel like the only way I can say what I need to say is… well… I’m going to sing it.” Though I still couldn’t tell who anyone was specifically, I saw delighted faces and heard gasps and more applause. “This song says everything I can’t,” I explained, “and it’s called ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’.” And with that, I released. “Come stop your crying, it’ll be alright. Just take my hand, hold it tight. I will protect you from all around you, I will be here, don’t you cry. ‘Cuz you’ll be in my heart, yes you’ll be in my heart, from this day on, now and forevermore. You’ll be in my heart, no matter what they say, believe me, you’ll be in my heart, always.”

As I sang, I didn’t shut my eyes and pretend to be singing alone. For the first time in a long while, I looked into the eyes of the audience as I sang and could feel each person that I saw. I felt the tears springing fresh from one girl’s eyes, and I felt the surprise and delight of another boy to whom I had never spoken. I felt the swelling pride in my friends, who pumped their fists in the air, and I felt the warm smiles of the parents and program leaders watching from the back, wondering whom this girl was. I wasn’t singing so that people would see and hear me; for the first time, I was singing so that I could feel other people. I felt the notes I was singing like the emotions of each person that filled the room, and everything was good.

I have no recollection of walking back to my seat except for Leah, who immediately pounced, suffocated me with her violent embrace. The audience was cheering, I could hear, but saw nothing. “Do it again!” I heard a few boys chanting. All I could do was look down at my flip-flops and chipped red toenail polish, ready to explode with the tsunami of emotions I had just experienced, the foremost of which was pure joy. I looked at no one, but could still feel them looking at me.

“That was wild, Eileen,” Leah said in my ear. “I felt something big.” Others later congratulated me, saying mostly that they didn’t even know I could sing, that I came out of nowhere and that the surprise is what made the entire night special. Jason called again for someone to speak, but no one gave a senior talk after me.