A sobbing, hysterical mess, Sarah forces herself off of the ground and over to the nightstand where she grabs her cell phone. Behind a wall of tears, she struggles to make out the name of her mom and hits send. As the dial tone drones on in its rhythmic, constant tone, Sarah gets lost in a reverie wondering when she lost her own rhythm. She thinks of one day in music class, listening to the constant ticking of her teacher’s metronome and-

“Hello?” Her mother’s voice sliced through her wall of thought.

Sarah took a deep breath and in wondering how she could even begin to verbalize how she was feeling blurted out, “I’m dropping out of college.”

A silence paralyzed both ends of the call as Sarah wondered where she even fabricated such a wild idea.

“ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?” Her mother’s tone was a hybrid of disgust and disbelief, “I paid a FORTUNE to send you to the best college in the state, and you think you can just give up like a moron?!”

Sarah was silent; her eyes wider than the full moon shining in from her dorm window. Her thoughts were pulsating through her mind as she struggled to get a hold of one, any one, that would make any more sense to her mother as it would to her.

“I… I need to come home now.” She spat out and hung up the phone.

Sarah sat staring at her phone go into a frenzy as her mom kept trying to get a hold of her daughter. There were no more tears in her eyes, just a blank, empty look that she realized had been there for the entirety of her life. If there was no life in her eyes, how could there be life within her spirit? As her brain slowed down, almost as a computer does when it is overloaded with too much information, she crumbled onto the ground and fell into a deep sleep where she remained for the rest of the night.

The sunlight stinging her sore eyes, Sarah woke up and took a look around. This really was all she worked for her whole life. But she had the sudden epiphany that maybe it wasn’t what she really wanted. She had been unhappy at college for weeks now, deeper than just school stress or drama with friends. “Does working for something your whole life necessarily mean that it’s where you’re supposed to end up?” She thought to herself. She then glanced over at her sleeping roommate. “God. She didn’t even bother to check if I was okay last night? Whatever, I need to get home.”

The drive home was somewhat therapeutic for her. She pulled into her driveway and noticed her mom wasn’t home. As she approached the door, she calculated that her mom probably wouldn’t be home for another hour when she arrives home from work. Sarah unlocked the door and made her way to her old bedroom. She sat down on her perfectly made bed, she thought about how it was never made when she resided there. It looked strange to Sarah, kind of like her mom controlled a part of her life that she couldn’t. And that’s when she realized, “This is MY life. At the end of the day, I’M the only one that needs to be happy with who I am. My mom has been controlling my life for 19 years and I’m miserable with it. I am in control of my own life and I should be doing what is best for myself.” She felt overwhelmed by a wave of realization and suddenly knew what to tell her mother. She got up and searched for an old notebook to take a piece of paper from when she stumbled upon her old violin. Opening the case very slowly, Sarah took in the smell of the polished wood and rosin. She pulled out the axe and the bow and placed it on her shoulder. Before she knew it, she was playing a song she learned back in grade school. Melodies came flooding back into her fingers, as did memories of her past. Music was the one thing Sarah truly did for herself, and she remembered she only quit because her mom wanted her to focus on her schoolwork.

After about a half hour or so, she put down her beloved instrument and picked up a pencil. She wrote down what been the result of the insane storm brewing inside her head for the past few hours. She packed up her violin as well as a bag of about two weeks worth of clothes. She left the note on her pillow for her mom to discover. Gathering up her belongings, Sarah took the note in one hand and walked out of the room she once loved so much. She felt the walls expanding as soon as she passed the threshold. She knew where she needed to go and got into her car to get there.

Sarah approached the check-in desk at the airport and asked, “What’s the cheapest flight you have out of here within the hour?”

“Let me check,” the attendant said in a pleasant voice, “We have an unsold ticket on the 5:30 flight to London. At this point it’s basically worthless, so we can sell it to you for $70.”

Sarah handed over her money in awe at her stroke of luck. She had no freaking idea what she was gonna do in London, but then again, she had no freaking idea what she was doing at a college she hated.

Sarah’s mom unlocked the door and walked inside to an unfamiliar noise. Mesmerized by the constant ticking, she followed the sound into her daughter’s room. She found the metronome Sarah’s violin teacher had used for her lessons years ago ticking away and went to turn it off. She found the note her daughter had left and read it as she turned off the metronome and read it aloud.

“The path that you have made for me has hit a dead end, and now I have to go continue paving it in the direction I want to go”.

All the realization that she had been a tyrant to her beloved daughter for her entire life hit her as she erupted in tears. She picked up her cell phone and found Sarah’s name. She hit send but instead of being greeted by the constant murmur of the dial tone, her ears were sliced with the erratic sound of a robotic woman saying “The person you are trying to reach has turned off their phone. Please leave a message or try your call again.”

She slammed down the phone and broke into a greater state of hysteria. She realized, however, that after a lifetime of wearing down her daughter emotionally, a phone call couldn’t solve anything. She was no longer focused on trying to mold the perfect daughter, but rather wanted to let her daughter live the life she chose. The tears stopped, and she picked up the phone and dialed her daughter again.

“Please leave a message or try your call again.”

The tone was strangely comforting and gave her the composure to say the words her daughter’s ears had been craving for 19 years, “I believe in your ability to achieve something great, and I hope wherever you are, it’s the right place. Just know that when you do what needs to be done, I’m here for you always. I love you.”

She hung up the phone and thought to herself, “How can I ever hope to have someone listen to me when I can’t listen to myself? I guess the only way to solve a problem with someone else is to first delve into my own motivations for peace.”

And there her mother sat, with the light of the rising moon slowly filling the room as did the memories of how beautiful and happy her daughter had been years and years ago while receiving violin lessons in her very spot.