When I was in my freshman year of high school, I was really depressed and had a lot of anxiety. I felt like my parents were putting a lot of pressure on me to be perfect and was struggling with that pressure. I now understand that the pressure was just out of love because they wanted me to do my best in school, but back then, I didn’t understand this. The summer after freshman year, I wrote a song about this called "Trophy Child". It was very vulnerable and deeply emotional. It was my way of communicating my feelings, and was in no way meant to criticize my parents.
This year, in my junior year, my school’s choir held a small informal show (only 30 people in the audience). My choir director, who organized this show, wanted me to sing in it. She knew I had written a couple songs and wanted me to play one at this show.
As I was going through my songs to choose, my mom told me to make sure I choose a song I can connect to emotionally, because I cannot connect with the audience if I don’t connect to the song first. After a lot of deliberation, I chose "Trophy Child". I sang it for both of my parents first and asked them multiple times if it was ok to sing that song at the show. I made sure to add that this song was not criticizing them, it was only me talking about how much pressure I felt back then. They both agreed and said they had no problem.
After I sang this song, a lot of people came up to me and talked about how relatable the song was and that it made them feel seen. Some of my friends even told me they cried while I was singing. Overall, everyone seemed to love my song. I was really happy with the show. As soon as I saw my parents, I asked them how the show was, expecting them to comment on my performance and tell me what they thought about it. They didn’t say anything. They talked about other people’s performances but didn’t say a word about mine. This is a bit weird because every single time I perform, my parents always give me a bunch of feedback about what I did well and what I could’ve done better, but this time, they didn’t say anything. I felt a little weird about it but chose not to push it.
I didn’t really think too much about it until yesterday (2 weeks after the show), when my mom was mad at me for getting distracted while studying. She started talking about how she was under the impression that I had been studying the whole day when I was actually distracted and watching youtube (that’s a lie I literally took a 5 minute break and was planning on getting back to studying after that). My mom told me she felt guilty seeing me study all the time while the rest of the family had, but seeing me distracted like that made all that guilt not worth it. Then, while talking to my dad, my mom brought up "Trophy Child" and how she hasn’t been treating me like a trophy this entire time.
I think the song made my parents feel bad and now I feel awful for singing it at the show. AITA?
NTA. You have the right to process your own experiences. Sometimes that might be with words that can never capture the complexity or full reality of our world. That’s ok. You are trying to capture your reality. Keep doing it. But talking about it with your parents is also a great thing to do. So you seem to be doing it great. Write cool songs, talk about it with people around you.
thank you! I’ve been feeling guilty about this for a while and reading this made me feel so much better
You’re NTA. Maybe your song struck a nerve that needed to be poked. Your mom should be glad you can express yourself in a way that is not self-destructive.