I Truly Care About You- An Original

Hey everyone and welcome back to my blog! On Friday, July 15th, I shared the backstory of how I ended up making my first YouTube video, Away in a Manger- A Chinese Christmas Cover. If you haven’t read that blog yet, click here. More importantly, if you haven’t read my first blog, Let’s Start At the Very Beginning, or my first blog of this week, School Is Over, please check those out as well! They give the overall summary of why I’m doing what I’m doing and what my blog schedule is like.

In this blog, I will be sharing with you the backstory of the second video I uploaded onto YouTube. This story was a little tough to write about. I Truly Care About You is an original song that I wrote last summer, 2021. I have mentioned before that I am religious and that I served a Mission for my church. I also have many friends who have done the same.

One bright, sunny Sunday I was at home when my parents walked in the front door and told me to go to our neighbor’s house up the street from us. These neighbors are like a second family to us.

“They have a special guest there that you might want to see,” my dad said.

“Am I…supposed to know who it is?” I asked.

“You’ll just have to go and find out for yourself…” my mom said with a wry smile.

Realizing that they weren’t going to give anything away, my curiosity and love for surprises convinced me to walk out the door. As I walked past my neighbors’ houses to get to my destination, I started trying to guess who this mysterious guest could be.

When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a guy in his Sunday outfit with his back to me, sitting at my neighbor’s piano playing a few notes. But very quickly he turned around as he heard me open the door, and I immediately recognized him. It was my neighbor’s son who I thought was in California serving his full time Mission! I was stunned as he said hello and gave me a big hug. Why is he back from his Mission so soon?? I thought to myself. He hadn’t even served a full year, and the men serve for two years in my church.

I wondered if it had anything to do with Covid. His brother was on his Mission when Covid hit and was sent back home for a while before being reassigned to an area in the States. But when I asked him and his mom why he was back so soon, I found out that it was nowhere near his brother’s situation. This friend of mine had depression.

“I’ve never seen you as someone who could have depression,” I said to him.

“The happiest people have it,” his mom replied back.

Indeed, he is such an outgoing guy. He climbs just about anything, goofs off all the time, and I had hardly even seen him without a smile on his face. I didn’t understand it! At least, up until I had a personal conversation one day with his mom where she told me, “He says, ‘I live a lie’.”

It was so heartbreaking to hear her say that and so sad to know that he wasn’t really always happy. And yet, there was an even sadder experience waiting just around the corner. It was on a summer day last year that I had decided to drop by their house where I found the mom cleaning the house and vacuuming. When she said that her son was in the hospital, I was shocked!

“What?? What hap-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She interrupted me with a firm voice and continued vacuuming.

I sat by her piano in silence. I had originally wanted to play it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just sat there and I started to cry. Soon she saw my upset face and came back over to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a comforting voice. “I just don’t usually cry when I’m upset. I put my emotions into cleaning and doing stuff.”

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I said.

“It’s because you don’t see him as much as our family so it came as a surprise to you.”

That and the fact that I had just watched one of the last episodes of a show called Dwight in Shining Armor which had already made me cry and think about how it might feel like if all the wonderful people in my life just vanished. (That’s the closest thing you get to spoilers. Watch the show for yourself on BYUTV if you haven’t seen it!)

Unfortunately for me, I had a summer evening job at a Bistro. I had to get ready and leave for work really soon, so my moment of weeping was short lived. As I got ready back at home, I tried to shift the thoughts in my brain and focus on the work I was about to do. But I still kept thinking of my friend in the hospital. So I did the one thing I know can calm my brain from something sad or dramatic. I started writing a song.

I decided that I wanted to write it in a way that other people can connect with it as well. So in that small amount of time before I had to leave, I wrote a few lines describing the personality that he has.

When I got to work, I knew that I needed to focus on cleaning tables, taking dishes to the kitchen, and simpler things such as folding napkins. But I couldn’t help thinking over and over again, He’s in the hospital…he’s in the hospital…he’s in the hospital… Along with that, I was trying to keep the tune I had thought of for the song in my memory. When I write a song, both the lyrics and the melody come to me at the same time. But I didn’t want to forget it as the music in the Bistro was playing.

For the next several weeks, I worked on this song while he was in the hospital. I even felt inspired to have guitar chords as my accompaniment. I was able to find chords that fit the key through online sources and I started to practice them, trying to get my fingers used to this instrument I could hardly play. If you can recall from yesterday’s blog, I had mentioned that I had taken a beginning guitar class. But this was the summer before this class happened and the guitar was unfamiliar to me.

Finally and thankfully, my friend was back home from the hospital! At the very end of the day that I had seen him again, there wasn’t anything happening at their house so I quickly ran down to my house to get my guitar and rushed back before I’d chicken out. I’ve written and shared so many songs before, but I had never felt so nervous to share a song as I had with this one. Depression is a subject that I don’t truly understand, and I was worried that I’d offend him rather than comfort him.

Nevertheless, I came over and played my song for him and his mom since everyone else was asleep or not home. My left fingers struggled a little as I looked for chords while singing. I would look at him every now and then to see what his reactions were, but all I would get was a small smile whenever we locked eyes with each other. I kept wondering what he thought of the lyrics, “Hey, yes you with the bright shining face…” “Your smile is just concealing your true feelings down deep.” And then there was the line in the third verse, “Hey, yes you putting up a facade.” a reference to what his mom told me about him living a lie…

When I ended the song, I looked up. He thanked me for the song and that he appreciated it, but I didn’t see much emotion on his face. His mom, on the other hand, was crying!

“I’m so glad we’re friends with you!” she said through her tears.

There you have it, the backstory to this emotional song. Sorry to have yet another emotional blog so soon, but I actually didn’t cry a bunch while writing this like I did with my blog about school ending. School Is Over is a reminder that so many good experiences aren’t going to continue happening. But I don’t have as much worry and sadness about this as I did when I wrote this song because my friend is doing a lot better now.

There’s more to the story for when I put together my YouTube video of this song which I’ll post tomorrow. Make sure you check out that video and share it with others who you think might need it! I also have the sheet music for this song available if you are a guitarist or you’re trying to learn guitar. Please remember to look at the links previously mentioned and leave a comment down bellow!

Thanks for reading until the end!