My memories trace back to the time when Chopin was always at the top of my music list. Now I listen to him less often; the sentimental nature of his works drenches my mind in a weighty nostalgia and introspection. By then I had an affinity for the ambiguity of literature and music; I still love them and see them as integral parts of my experience- for different reasons now.

I deemed myself to be a romantic. To that young troubadour, the windows of the classroom were not glass panes, but an elaborate canvas of the drifting clouds that implied the many toils of the observer’s experience. With my words, I crafted paper figures laden with connotative meaning and symbolism; they were puppets that fell under the sway of my turbulent mind. There I was a vain lord of purple prose, a pseudo-poet whose lines had woven her own gilded cage.

I was to some extent blinded by this excessive simulation, a world of senses that I suffocated myself in. One moment I could be sitting at a desk admiring the peculiar feeling of the nib of a pen crossing the margins, and yet another moment I am there with the music, pining for the unrequited affection of a proud and distant lover. I copied pieces of German poetry onto my notebook, despite not being able to understand most of it without the aid of the internet.

I always walked in the rain, eager to hear their gentle knocks on the surfaces around me.

I didn’t “feel” the rain cling to my arm, nor did I “see” the waterdrops that fell from the sky. I perceived the world through symbols, through metaphors, and through complex themes that I could comprehend. The rain drenched my clothes, but not just as water upon the usual school uniform, but as blood would smear the garments of a medieval knight, or as the tears of a maiden did upon the collar of her fine silk blouse.

I never saw stars in the city I lived in, but wherever I went, I always believed that they were up there somewhere, looking over me. Just as how, even on days when the sunlight poured bountifully, I would imagine that I walked in drizzling rain.

I can see the faint stars above me, yet I never dreamed of reaching them or being with them in any way. For when I looked up at them there were no roads that were directed upwards, only ones that sprawled horizontally. The stars provoked a yearning within me, which I hastily tried to satisfy with mimics of their radiance. I may sprint through the mist to coat my eyes with droplets, so that the refractions of worldly brightness may scatter into my pupils alike those heavenly messengers. Yet it was too dreary, and I could not look long at them, for the tears rolled down my cheeks and brought the starlight with them. So eventually the meaning of sprinting evaded me, and I chose to stay stationary.

“It is not meant to create a powerful effect: it is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy, giving the impression of someone looking gently towards a spot that calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.”

And yet I searched into the memories of others, obscurely alluded by eloquent verses. My own memories were worthless; it is only through others’ pasts that I can piece together a narrative dignified enough to be worthy of reverie. I can be the one who plucks the blood-stained rose and seeks after that courtly lover, or I can be the nightingale who thrusts themselves upon that rose and drains their blood. So that whenever I gaze down at the rose in my hand, I can feel its pricks upon my heart, still beating obstinately. But is it my heart or the others’ heart?

I am, simultaneously, the swain and the raven with a rose between their beak. And that rose of idealism burst open with the venomous pollen of rationality.

Until that point, I believed I would become a musician or an author. Or maybe even a poet. I did not know my future, but I knew I was obsessed with that rose within my hand and sought to plant it in firm soil for it to develop and stem even more.

Then the rain stopped. Bushes of rose vines whose stems enclosed me had shielded me from the rain. The mist dispersed in the presence of a strong gust, which had spread the pollen to even farther corners of the earth. My eyes failed to veil their vision with the thin mist, and now I could no longer deceive myself of seeing starlight. All I could see was the scorching sun and the flaring torches in a distant village.

I loved to write. But since that moment anything I write and have written seemed so frivolous, so blatantly excessive, that I dared not to call it “creative writing” but would rather classify it as blobs of deoxygenated blood clots that came out through the larynx and spilled onto the paper. I felt like I suddenly lost the ability to feel the excitement of words, the jubilant spirit of rhymes that I had grown dependent on.

One would think that my muse abandoned me, but perhaps they instead offered me a choice. It took me quite a while to pick up the courage to write for myself again, which I did by the time I turned fifteen. By now I realized that I was not writing for myself back then, since all my confusion came from the lack of a voice- and that void of opinions, perspective, and self is what made those words suddenly pale. How could someone before a dusty mirror see other images of beauty when they cannot even descry their own complexion? The heartbeat of another will be fast overwhelmed by the ambiance no matter how hard I try to preserve it.

The mirror shattered and took a long time to be restored. Yet my departing muse’s evanescent shadow in the subsiding mist led me to take my first step on the path that I may have been destined to take. I still love Chopin, nonetheless. That path behind me that I had come from was strewn with countless instances of him providing me with consolation and companionship, and I am still grateful to have fallen in love with his music. That path still guides me to this day.