stiff, refusing to move when I needed to make any large tuning adjustment. Too much force could break a string, and after I did that once, I avoided touching the pegs through any means possible.

       I was only in my second year of playing the violin when I snapped my A string. I sat there, clutching the instrument by its neck, as if that would undo the damage. I had succeeded in turning the peg, but the string was quivering, curling in on itself. Tears started streaming down my face, and when my mother came into the room and saw me crying, I was as speechless as the violin I cradled against my chest, willing the string to meld itself back together so that we could sing again.

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The violin became my voice so that I wouldn’t have to speak on my own. Every spark of anger spat out notes with a staccato stroke; sorrow was a slow melody that wept in every sway and tilt of vibrato. To those who knew me as the “violin girl,” the violin became a part of me. An inseparable piece of wood that slowly fused itself into my flesh. The violin stopped being an extension of myself—a method of expression—and turned into a crutch without which I could not navigate through life.

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B. The fingerboard stays glued in place along the neck of the violin. It comes without frets or other markings, making it the most intimidating part of the entire instrument. Every melody I produced was mapped out along the ebony, and laying down finger tapes helped me become familiar with the violin’s neck: I learned how far to extend my left hand, how to cradle the thin neck between my thumb and forefinger. As an amateur student, I didn’t know that I would later be expected to remove the finger tapes that had become part of the violin. No one told me that by the time I reached high school, I would be expected to know my instrument well enough to play without needing to watch as my fingers danced across the strings.

       On the first day of freshman year, I walked into the orchestra room with my chin raised and my eyes narrowed, swallowing any kernel of doubt that threatened to halt my steps. I marched past the upperclassmen and seated myself in the middle of the first violin section, desperate to prove that I belonged in the top orchestra. But the moment that I pulled my violin out of its case, they took one look at the bright red finger tapes and made sure I knew that I was far behind. It didn’t matter that my intonation was flawless or that I was one of the youngest among them; needing those guides on my fingerboard instantly invalidated any talent I had. The finger tapes came off the moment I got home, and I spent every afternoon for the next month holed up in my bedroom, blinking back the frustrated tears when my fingers wandered aimlessly over a bare fingerboard.

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When the violin claimed me as its own, my world faded to shades of black and white. Dots and lines blurred across an endless stream of pages that dictated my every move, my every breath. The strings of my violin unraveled and lifted around me, locking me in a cage of my own making. I couldn’t escape their siren songs that lulled me into restlessness.

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C. Even though the bow is seen as an extension of the right hand, I always thought that it gave the violin its soul and voice. Heavier bows tend to carry a dense weight that draws out a deep, rich sound; others are lighter and airier, giving the violin that distinct fairly-like sound that is best suited for fluttering trills and high soprano notes. Whether it is handmade or mass-produced in a factory, no bow will sound exactly the same as another, and in the same sense, two different bows on one violin will produce two different sounds.

       I found my favorite bow in a hole-in-the-wall music shop in Dallas. The wood was light and flexible, but not delicate. It produced a warm, clear sound that swept the room like a spring breeze. I could push and dig into the strings, but the sound never turned cold or aggressive. The bow was a soft and quiet heartbeat, never too imposing—perfect for blending into the orchestra.

       But I wanted to be a soloist. I wanted my sound to resonate through the auditorium, to enchant my audience and lead them out of the blacks and whites of the real world for the night, but the instrument I played was too weak to produce such a sound. Searching for a new violin felt like a betrayal to the partner I had performed with for seven years.

       My second violin came with a bow to match. The wood was stiff and unpliable, demanding complete control and mastery of the instrument by the musician. The dense weight in the stick was heavy and unyielding, and breaking it in felt like I was the one being broken, warped into something that I never thought I could be. This bow spoke with a dark voice. Pianissimo was a sultry whisper that grew steadily into a roaring forte. From the bright bursts of sound from a ricocheting bow stroke to the soothing legato lullabies, it was a sound that I didn’t know how to control, but one that I desperately wanted to tame. I wanted to become so immersed in the music that the world around me faded into nothingness.

       I just didn’t realize that I would fade too.

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I heard that violin sing the melody over underlying harmonies; I felt it breathe as my fingers danced across the strings. Cradled on my shoulder, I swear I could feel a heart that beat in time with the slow, unchanging tempo. Stretching my hand over the strings, climbing higher and higher over the fingerboard—this melody was ours. The audience became a faceless mass in my periphery, and the spotlights above enveloped me in a cold embrace.

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D. From left to right, the strings are G, D, A, and E, with G being the lowest and E being the highest. These vocal cords must be manipulated to turn a droning note into a song, and without them, a violin is voiceless. On my best days, I was an expert at leading my fingers along the tightropes, but on my worst, I slipped and fell flat, slicing deep into lush harmonies. Not even the flow of vibrato could fully mask the jarring dissonance.

       In my first year of college, I spent most of my weekends in a practice room, swearing under my breath at my inability to nail the high notes of the solo I had been assigned. After failing for the fifth time in an hour, I took a deep breath in and nearly screamed as I exhaled. My fingers twitched over the strings before my fist clamped down on the entire neck, choking off the sound and yanking the violin off my shoulder. My face flushed with rage, and for a heartbeat, I pictured what it would feel like to slam the body of the instrument into the wall. I could already hear the hollow cry as the wood splintered and steel strings snapped. I wanted to hear it die, to feel it shatter in my grip. I wanted to leave its corpse—mangled and twisted—on that cold, unfeeling linoleum floor. I wanted the music to stop playing on a loop inside my head.

       I wanted it to sit and breathe deep, marveling in the silence.

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With my eyes closed, I could picture the sheet music before me, almost as clearly as if it were there on stage. I saw the notes lift away from the staves with every measure that I translated into sound. I imagined the black dots and lines drifting through the auditorium and dissolving with each new phrase that my violin sang. I remembered how the seniors before me played with such fluidity that it was impossible to tell musician from instrument. I wanted to feel my violin latch onto my body and turn us into one entity, but even as I gave voice to its despair, I felt a knot twisting deep in my stomach. I heard the melody, not as a sound that I owned, but as a voice that whispered, “This was not made for you.”

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E. This thin sliver of wood is inarguably the most delicate part of the violin because the only thing holding it in place is the tension in the strings that rest on its ridges. Throughout my entire time as a violinist, teachers warned against tightening the strings too much because if the tension became too great, the bridge could shatter into splinters.

       I was never unfortunate enough to suffer through that kind of heart-stopping terror, but I watched it happen to our concertmaster during her senior recital. She played with an imposing, controlled energy that I had only ever seen in professionals. Every bow stroke landed heavy and dug into her strings as she danced across the thin line between passion and aggression. This was her last winter concert, and everyone in the orchestra knew that she wanted this performance to be the best she had ever done. Her violin sang high and clear, belting out notes on the E string that I couldn’t even read on sheet music. She was climbing higher and higher, hitting every note with her eyes closed, when her sound cut off with a violent crack.

       The accompaniment dissolved beneath her when the orchestra realized that she had stopped playing. We all sat paralyzed, arms still poised over our instruments, waiting for the continuation of a melody that had just died. The silence that followed was heavy and empty all at once, and I’m not sure if anyone in that auditorium was breathing. The soloist was the only one moving, blinking fiercely as she fought against the tears welling in her eyes. It was only when I saw her gaze dart toward the audience that I remembered her telling her friends that she had college professors coming to watch her perform.

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I pulled us through the end of the chaconne with a desperate, wild attempt to show that I controlled this sound, this instrument. My shoulders tensed, and the strings cut into my fingertips as I forced the violin to sing one last time, to let me be the one in control. I held it so tightly that it’s a wonder that I didn’t choke the sound altogether. The melody that swam in my dreams at night flooded the auditorium. Rosin dust flew from the bow as the hairs sprang away from the strings, and the violin shuddered when the final chord scattered and dissipated, as if it had exhaled its last breath.

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F. The fine tuners are used only for small tuning adjustments. Unlike the pegs, fine tuners are not essential in the tuning process, but they are not entirely useless either. In the earliest years of my musicianship, they were training wheels, but after breaking my string that first time, I clung to the fine tuners and pretended the pegs didn’t exist.

       When I started college, I knew that the fine tuners were warning flags. Like the finger tapes in high school, the fine tuners signaled to the upperclassmen and grad students that I wasn’t ready for the orchestra I had been thrown into. They glowed like beacons under the stage lights and attracted fleeting glances and hushed whispers behind my back. I dreaded the changing of the seasons because the sudden drops or rises in the temperature outside messed with the tuning, and fine tuners could only take me so far before I was forced to wrestle with the pegs.

       How good is a violinist if she fights against her own instrument when she tunes?

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The violin became a dead weight on my shoulder. It no longer breathed and sang with me; each practice session ended with an aching shoulder and a growing need to abandon the instrument in a dark practice room. Every note that stuttered out of the violin fell on deaf ears and deepened my resentment for this world that held itself together with dots and lines. Leaving it behind was easy. So much faster than I had anticipated it would be. I thought that the strings would curl themselves around my neck, reminding me of whose voice I really used, but they laid flat and motionless when I tucked the violin into its case for the last time. Thirty-five hundred dollars locked away in a warm, safe coffin. The melodies and harmonies that writhed together settled into a gentle silence, and for the first time in nearly twelve years, there was no haunting song that lulled me to sleep. There was only stillness and darkness.