I took piano lessons as a kid through my late teens, and then didn't touch a piano until 20 years later...about a month ago.<p>I've been on a work sabbatical, and realized that I really loved playing back then, and that part of bringing balance back to my life might involve bringing music back into the picture.<p>When I got the piano, I started easing myself back into the basics. But occasionally, I'd try to play some of the very technical pieces I'd learned as a kid. It felt as if I'd forgotten everything about playing them.<p>I stopped trying, and refocused on learning new things. About a week into this, I sat down, and just played the technical thing without thinking about it. It was always there, and I hadn't done anything to relearn it, it just was somewhere beyond the circuitry that typically fires.<p>Shortly after this came flowing out of my fingers, a flood of memories surfaced that shed light on issues of my childhood. My memory of that time period is mostly non-existent (trauma/abuse that I've been working through for many years), so having any glimpse into it is pretty surprising.<p>Also disturbing, as it turns out, but it gave me something to work with where before there had only been pain and a sense of feeling lost.<p>There's something magical about closing your eyes, and feeling the keys, and the keys becoming an extension of your thoughts and feelings in that moment, and feeling like you can spill your emotions onto the keyboard, and these beautiful sounds come out.<p>I don't doubt that music reconnected some pathways that haven't been active for awhile. I'm trying to be more careful about playing music I learned back then though...