OP-ED: The Art Of Balancing Music & Medicine With Jemma Siles

“One day you’re going to have to choose... music or medicine.”

Those words have echoed through my mind for years, spoken by so many different people in so many different ways.

As a kid, I was like every other little girl, dreaming up who I wanted to become. I would dress up, slip into the imagined shoes of the women who came before me and twirl around my room with a CD on repeat.

I had a broken, unplugged microphone in one hand, a “setlist” with costume changes in the other and a whole choreographed show ready for any guest who dared step foot in our house. I begged my parents for a keyboard with plug-in headphones so I could play and write at all hours of the night.

And so it began. I insisted they enrol me in a performing arts company, and I trained three to four days a week in every style imaginable. My thinking was simple: if I am going to be a pop star, I need to know how to dance, too.

When I started performing, strangers would stop me outside stage doors to say how a certain song I sang made them feel something. That is when I realised it was not just a “me” thing, music helps people. If I could move someone through another artist’s words, imagine what I could do with my own stories. A big revelation for an eight-year-old, I know.

But at the same time, I had this other part of me. Whenever someone got hurt, I would run for Band-Aids and my little bottle of “magic water.” I would see stories on the news about communities in need and feel this spark: what if I could help? How could I help? I am just a girl. And then it hit me: doctor. If I became a doctor, I could go anywhere and help anyone. I have had a big personality and even bigger ideas since the moment I learned to talk.

So, my childhood became this constant dance between worlds. School during the day, rehearsals at night, competitions on weekends. I watched Hannah Montana on repeat, as if it might actually be a documentary rather than fiction. I also desperately wished I had magical powers like Alex from Wizards of Waverly Place, but sadly, those never kicked in. Hannah felt a little more realistic.

Flash forward to now. After spending all my formative years juggling two huge dreams, people constantly ask, ‘How do you balance it all?’ The honest answer: you don’t. One will always take priority, and the art is in recognising which one needs you more at any given time.

When I was writing this EP, I would spend the day in the studio, then come home to study and log into online classes. I scheduled my studio sessions for the week after an exam so I would only have weekly tests to worry about. For two or three weeks, I would write or record during the day and study at night. Then, when an exam week rolled around, everything else stopped. No friends, no TV, just study, gym to manage the stress, and sleep.

People sometimes assume I am more passionate about one path than the other, but really, that is just my brain compartmentalising. When I feel on top of one area, the other moves into focus. And when one starts slipping, I flip. Do not ask me what happens when both slip; that is a whole different type of chaos.

Doing both has changed me. It has taught me to stay calm in a crisis while still somehow spiralling over the smallest things. It has shown me that things rarely go perfectly, but if you make it to point B intact, you have done enough.

A few years ago, everything felt like it was falling apart. Not just the juggling, but life in general. I felt like I had no control over anything. So I picked one achievable task: getting my licence. I told myself, if all I accomplish this year is getting my licence, that is enough. And weirdly, it worked. That small, seemingly mundane goal shifted everything. Having control over one thing made me feel like I could keep the rest of the balls in the air.

I feel things too deeply sometimes, a weakness I try every day to turn into a superpower. I did not want anyone else to feel the loneliness or “otherness” I sometimes felt. I want people to feel connected, to drop the pressure of being cool or perfect. At the end of the day, we are all human, all riding the highs and lows at different points.

Music and medicine are not as separate as people assume. When you are in pain sitting in a doctor’s office, none of the high school dramas or insecurities matter. And when you are at a concert singing your favourite lyrics with thousands of strangers, life’s worries fade the same way. They both heal, one through the body and the other through the soul.

At the end of the day, and yes, it is a little cheesy, it really does feel like a calling. I could not be anyone else or do anything else without losing myself. If you want something badly enough, you will go through the sleepless nights, the sacrifices, the heartbreak, the grind. You will find a way, even when it feels impossible.

Jemma Siles’ debut EP, Scripts Of Fate, is out now. You can listen to the EP here.