Just sang a lied I’ve been avoiding for years

The moment I stepped into the audition room with Schubert’s 'Der Tod und das Mädchen' — my hands were shaking. Not from nerves, exactly, but from the weight of it: this piece that always felt like a mirror to my own fear of being too much, too dark, too mezzo. I sang it through without stopping, and when I finished, the silence in the room was so full it hurt. I didn’t cry. But I wanted to. It wasn’t perfect — but it was mine. That’s the first time in ten years I’ve let myself be heard as I actually am.