((I had like four paragraphs written for this submission and I didn't SAVE IT fuck my life :D So here's a shorter version of what I wrote. Kill me please))

METACOGNITION TIME!
Hooves can be quite debilitating. But I actually do have some mental thingies and holdovers from being diagnosed with Asperger's as a kid, one of which is impairment of my coordination. (Although my autistic traits were more severe when I was younger) For the most part, I'm just clumsy and oblivious but one of the more frustrating effects is the fact that my hands don't fuckING WORK. I'm exaggerating, but I am physically unable to move each of my fingers independently, in addition to my left hand being even less able. To put it visually, I can't do "Live long and prosper" (which fucking sucks) or snap.

I notice all these traits are evident when I attempt toplay music. I played flute from about 4th grade to Freshman year of highschool, and I sucked at it because my fingers simply couldn't move fast enough or to the right place. Sophomore year I switched to percussion, which was one of the best decisions of my life because playing mallet instruments and drums has improved my coordination and I'm actually pretty decent at it. But my brain is a tricky fucker.

A few months ago I became very depressed because while auditioning for a higher band, I listened to everyone else around me playing their songs perfectly while I was still struggling after months of practice. I assumed I was just stressed and overreacting, but when I told my mom about it afterwards she told me that I wasn't being silly and that I really do have some mental differences that make it a little bit harder to function than other people. Suffice to say, that realization hit me like a train.

My stupid hands aren't the only issues either. I'm not the most musically inclined person on the planet, so I have to learn music in a roundabout way. I can't really see a rhythm and associate it with my hands or I can't visualize (?) a song in my head just by looking at notes on a page. I have to look at patterns, (which percussion is luckily full of) how it relates to other sounds happening, and even music theory (which does give me an upper hand when it comes to transposing and writing music, haha) And because my brain works completely in letters and not numbers, I also try to look at music in a more literary sense rather than mathematically.

I'm writing this now because in this new marching band season I am playing the marimba...with four mallets. Which is pretty difficult to do correctly for a regular person and even harder with my awkward hands. Plus it HURTS. Luckily, our show's theme is "machine," and all four songs are based around consistent rhythm, and my part is a bass part with repetitions of four to eight notes at a fast but doable tempo, because as you can imagine, playing extremely fast and complicated parts is a bit harder when you have two mallets in each hand flying everywhere. All that aside, I did get into a higher band and I'm actually doing pretty damn good with four mallets (Although I bs it sometimes because I can't get the proper technique right yet). And being in a very prestigious band winning state the past three years in a row...I think I've been doing pretty damn good.

Oddly enough, I type fast, draw and succeed monumentally at video games. #logic