By this point, she’d grown used to the feeling. Emptiness, an utter lack, and yet a heavy weight. All she could feel was a sort of blank tingle across her body and the weight of the glass in her hoof. She sighed and looked down at the room temperature amber liquid, swirling it a bit and trying to collect her thoughts.
Rejection… hurts. From the moment she walked into the audition, cello slung in its case over her back, she could tell she was out of her league. The ponies around her, the questions asked, the pieces being practiced echoing through the hall… and yet she deluded herself, thinking it would be fine.
The audition was… normal. She set out everything that was required of her, knowing she had the potential for far more, but… it didn’t occur to her that putting in more effort now would pay out. Looking back, she felt the fool for it. She had the ability, she was a true talent, and yet she didn’t think she’d need to show it. Just hit every note with grace and move on so the next pony can perform.
She sighed and took a drink, the liquor burning on the way down, reminding her that she did in fact have a body inside her empty shell of a self. She looked back up and across the room, her cello sitting in its case, silent and heavy. It was her only potential. All she knew. She’d given up so much for it, and here she was… good enough, but failing time after time to prove it.
Smash it.
She shook her head and took another drink, letting the alcohol burn and sting at her tongue, trying to push the thought from her mind. She just slumped against the chair she sat in, no hope, no direction, no sense of worth. Again, a feeling she was familiar with. Time and again, she’d come here, yet she never truly got used to it. There was always some side of her, something that she hated, that jumped to the foreground and reminded her how much she despised herself. Jealousy, lack of empathy, short minded hedonism, or just general laziness, she had plenty to suffer for. Part of her felt she deserved to suffer like this sometimes.
Another long sip of her drink ran it dry and she reached down for the bottle, pouring more into the glass without any attention paid to the amount. It was a habit of hers. She was usually quite good about counting and measuring her drinks, but… sometimes she’d just buy a bottle and decide to give up on that until it was empty. Usually that meant a few days of hard drinking and coming to peace with whatever her reason for the affair had been. She noted the bottle nearly two thirds empty.
Had she always been like this? She used to have hope, see her potential, have some level of faith in herself, right? The more she thought about it, the farther back that moment felt like it must have been. Maybe in high school? No, her joy in school was all in the form of petty distraction. Sure, she’d even met a few nice ponies along the way, got to feel what it is that foals tend to call love but usually boils down to lust without knowledge of where that emotion intends to lead. No, school was all childish frivolity and slavish studying, merely doing the bare minimum of work to get the grades expected of her.
Farther back, perhaps when she earned her cutie mark? That was a feeling of accomplishment and direction, to be sure. She had a course in life all at once. One that went counter to the family business. One that her sister was better at than her anyway. The only reason she even took up the cello was to accompany her sister, whose skill at the fiddle was something she could never match. And then… her parents…
She took another swig of her drink, not wanting to dwell on past scars. She could barely remember life younger than that. Bits and pieces were there, but… nothing cohesive enough to determine if she’d ever been truly happy. The only temporary joy in life she’d ever felt was from romance, but that never lasted. Love fails. She’d had the same damn wooden box with strings for as long as she could remember, but couldn’t hold a relationship for more than two years since she came of age.
The cello still sat there, silent sentinel of the room, and she scowled at it. So much of her life could have been different. She… probably would have been happy on the farm. It was the work she grew up on, and it wasn’t bad. If only things had worked out that way, then maybe she’d have known joy and fulfilment in life. She took another drink, not even noticing the burn anymore.
The thing is, what could she do? Find more empty joy in distractions? Collapse into apathy for a while and hope she recovered? Alienate her loved ones with her sour mood? Drink herself to death?
Her eyes traced back to the cello and those same words glided back into her mind. Smash it.
It was the source of her problems, after all. She was anchored to the thing. It was always there, demanding her attention, her time, her effort. Every day she practiced, and every minute of practice was just… a means to an end. The joy of it was gone. It was all to fill the expectations of those around her. She’d given up her family to be able to have these opportunities, but now she didn’t even want them anymore. She just felt so… hollow.
She shot back the remainder of her drink and set the glass on the table, walking over to open the case and stare in at its occupant. Spruce and maple gazed up at her emptily, the strings idly humming from the case having been opened. It was such an integral part of her life, she couldn’t help but feel some pride and love for it. In some ways, this cello was her only child. Yet she stared at it, despite her logical mind’s objections, genuinely with eye for its destruction.
She just… needed change. Her life was so damaged, so empty. Sure she had a job, and it was even a job doing what she supposedly loved, but… what good is playing music if it’s not being appreciated. On a normal night of her playing at events, there were fewer ponies who stopped to actually, truly listen than she had hooves. The money was fine, she barely had to work, it should have been a dream job, but… she wanted the recognition. She was a true talent. Despite it all, she… played the same dozen or so quartet pieces every night she worked and then left without the slightest applause. It was humiliating. Selling her talent simply to make ends meet and to help the rich feel like they’re cultured.
She raised a hoof to the pegs, slowly starting to draw the A string tighter, soon A sharp, then B, then… a notable groan from the string sent a little shudder through her body. It suddenly felt real. This… was the first step towards satisfaction? She stopped, suddenly questioning it. What good would this do? She sighed and started to turn it back, giving the strand a little testing pluck, the tone proving to recover well enough. She just sighed, shaking her head, and stepped back over toward her bottle.
Loudly flopping down onto her chair, she groaned in frustration and hung her head, mind swirling. At some point, she realized that her mood wasn’t so much caused by the rejection as instigated by it. She was always at risk of feeling this way, of realizing just how empty she was, but she usually managed to stay distracted enough to not think about it. Just another day. Everypony surely is like this in private. Suffering through each moment is just… normal, right?
She chuckled darkly at herself, knowing full well what this was. If she’d went to a doctor, surely they’d put her on some pill or another, something to make her mind ‘right’. Something that would ‘fix’ her ‘imbalances’. She sneered and topped off her glass, grumbling as she took a sip. She… couldn’t. She couldn’t give up her self like that. No matter how much happier she’d be, she wouldn’t be her anymore, and that defeated the entire damn point.
No, she’d stick to her medicine of choice. She idly toasted nobody and took another sip of it. At least when it left her feeling like shit, the feeling was a familiar one. Just as familiar as the same thoughts that always spiralled through her mind at times like these. Every little failure, every trifling mistake, every thing she’d never forgive herself for. She could tell herself all she liked that it was just to make sure she never made the same mistakes twice, but… a part of her knew it was all just part of her unconscious desire to make herself suffer.
She took another drink.
Why keep trying? Was this all really worth the struggle? She grumbled to herself and lay back, shaking her head. Life was just one long struggle, and she hadn’t seen reward from it for… years. Why keep trying?
She tried to push the thought away, but it was always there. Some call it the curse of intellect. If you truly know and understand the world, you can start to see the pointlessness of it all, and then what? How do you keep going when you know it all just… ends in nothing? She receded into her shell further.
A gentle tapping at the door behind her snapped her back to reality, turning to face the hall, trying to plaster a neutral expression onto her blank stare. Just as she was about to stand, the door started to open, a mess of blue mane framing a concerned white face peeking through.
“Do you need something, Vinyl?”
Her roommate shook her head, stepping inside to look her over, a frown slowly forming. She glanced down at the bottle and sighed silently, lifting the fifth in her magic and drawing it away.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she complained, trying to grasp at the bottle as it passed but finding her coordination already too dead to manage it.
Vinyl just shook her head at her friend, looking her in the eyes seriously, and stepped forward to embrace her. This took her by surprise, a gentle squeak of confusion escaping the otherwise prim mare’s throat. It felt… good. So familiar, so meaningful, so… right. Even as bleary and dreary as her mind was, she couldn’t help but smile and return the gesture.
“You’ll do fine on the next one,” Vinyl forced a whisper, “I know you will. You’re the best damn musician I know, Tavi.”
Octavia pulled back a bit in shock and confusion, not really knowing how to react to that. She felt a soft smile cross her lips, her heart beating in her chest, that emptiness of her body gone for just a while. This… this is what kept her going. Not for herself, but for those she cared about. She might not have any faith in herself, but… if Vinyl insisted that things would be fine, she found it hard to disagree. Vinyl always seemed to know her better than she knew herself, anyway.
“Perhaps,” Octavia replied quietly, “But right now… I need some time.”
Vinyl let go and took a step back, nodding sincerely, before putting a hoof on Octavia’s shoulder and smiling at her sadly.
Just as she was about to leave, Octavia called out, “Thank you. I’ll… I’ll just get some rest. I’ll be better by morning.”
Vinyl grinned back over her shoulder, nodded once, and stepped back out the door.
Perhaps… perhaps she was right. Octavia sat down with the dregs of her glass, lifting it to her lips on reflex. She paused, the scent of liquor hitting her nostrils not nearly so sweet as it had been moments ago. She set the glass back down and looked at her instrument, the case still open to her.
She got up, lifted it in her hooves, and played.
