<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –At the beginning, we were sitting in the audience, each waiting for our turn to play the song in the competition. I kept on looking at the list to wait when it would be my turn. I was shaking not because I was nervous, but because I was excited. Then I heard my name being called by the judges. I went up the stairs on to the enormous stage in which my leg froze. I was not able to go up anymore, but with my power of will, I was able to somehow pull myself up.

I bowed before reaching the instrument and then sat on the chair next to the huge piano. My hands just couldn’t reach the instrument. The only thing I could was close my eyes and dream, just like I always would have done. I then felt the cold keys on the piano and felt as if that instrument was sucking the power out of me. The only thing that kept me alive was memory of people laughing at me because I was young, untalented and… different.

After the end, I felt that the instrument just sapped all the strength from me until I didn’t have enough power to sit. I thought I would have been dead because I couldn’t feel myself breathing. When I woke up, I was in a car, in which I figured out, was my parent’s car. My parents saw me waking up and said that I did well, but then I was disappointed when I heard that they took me early home because I didn’t look very well. When I went to school the next month, after my back injury, I was congratulated by the school staff and the director herself. I now was too scared to go to any competitions and had; what I would call; concertophobia.