So at my school, I’m one of like, three people who play the same instrument. I’m also the best out of the three, and I was placed in the highest ensemble. At first, I was excited, but now I realize they only put me in there because they need my instrument, so it’s definitely less of an achievement now. But that’s not really what I’m scared of, I’d say.

My friend showed me my part to her favorite song she played in that group, and I just kinda played it off like “Oh, that looks a little hard, but I bet I can do it!” When it looked like death itself. I guess all of the parts in this group look like that, and if they do, I’m absolutely screwed. You also have to go to Solo and Ensemble competition with a small ensemble if you’re in this group.

People just have way too much faith in me for some reason. I’m in a youth symphony, and pretty much every other person on my instrument is better than me by a lot, and I’m not even in the highest level youth symphony my city has. I’ve seen some of the top level players, some of who have been playing as long as I have, and they could crush me like a bug. My private lessons teacher throws tons of hard etudes at me every week, and on top of that, I’ve got the most difficult solo I’ve ever had to play. We stepped it up a lot from the last solo. Then I’ve got really hard marching band music (which I s*** at playing because I’m bad at marching and playing at the same time), and I also got accepted into another symphonic band, and I asked a few people who had joined in the past how the music was and they said it would literally be the hardest thing I’ve seen in my life. And my friends keep pushing me to join the pit for the fall play, which has a whole entire book of hard songs.

I hate how I’ve shoved myself into this whole situation. It’s all too much for me, but whenever I try to talk to someone about it, they’re just like “Dude, you’re the best in the school, you can do all of this and more! I’ve seen it!” But I can’t. All of this stress is making music less and less fun for me. I really want to quit right now, but I know that I would regret that and my parents would be super mad if I did. But it’s all so stressful.

I just really wish everyone could see that I have limits.