• My guitar has not led a glamorous life. For a start, it's an Oakridge. An OK brand, but not exactly well-known for their craftsmanship or anything. It's always had some ugly vibrating sounds if you don't hold it quite right. I never could hold it quite right.

    It sat, red timber carefully protected by plastic within its canvas case, in the garage of my friend's father for years before I bought it off him, sitting there in amongst a rabble of instruments and amps for a music store he would never go on to open. The friend always creeped me out a bit. We're Facebook friends still, but I don't talk to him anymore.

    I hadn't even really wanted a guitar, and I still blame this for my lack of skill with the instrument. I wanted a trombone. My father told me that this was not a practical instrument to learn, because no one brings a trombone out at a party to play. I never brought my guitar out at a party to play. It came with me to a few camps, but usually lay in my tent, unused. So I struggled to a few chords in guitar ensemble each week while some of my other friends had a number of school bands to choose from, or to graduate to if they had the skill.

    I had singing lessons as well as music theory lessons at school, and at our school they occurred during school hours. To avoid cutting into more lessons, my parents signed me up with some guy who taught out of his house, after school. He played a variety of instruments, played with people like Kylie Minogue. He didn't believe much in music theory. I learnt by scribbled bits of tab, improvisation and by listening.

    Learning Stairway was a highpoint. Probably THE highpoint. I had become delusional - making noises I could recognise as a song gave me the belief that I had suddenly stopped being a person who played guitar sometimes, and gone on to become a Guitarist. It was, after all, the song that every Guitarist could play. The crappy steel strings were done away with, I went out and bought some really great ones. I bought a decent amp that I wouldn't ever find a use for aside from annoying my parents at home. Even then, the guitar still rattled under my fingers, nothing but ugly sounds disguised by a little practice.

    I always liked it better when my teacher let me play on one of his electric guitars. Or even better - sometimes he'd teach me drums and I could play on his drum kit. My sense of rhythm was actually pretty good and I picked it up fast. My parents were not happy that I was wasting their money on an instrument I wouldn't even buy. I had a perfectly good acoustic guitar, after all.

    While still in high school, still going to guitar ensemble, one of my friends picked up the guitar and started playing. He was highly skilled - these days he's studying the instrument at the Victorian College of the Arts and giving lessons in his spare time. Before he started playing, I had complained to him about the vibrations, how my guitar could only make ugly noises. He picked the thing up, drummed against the thin timber, tuned my clumsily strung strings a little, and made the thing sing.

    That was the first and last time I've ever heard my guitar sound beautiful. It was one of the last times I came to guitar ensemble too, though at the time I chose to believe it was because my guitar teacher's epilepsy got worse, causing him to stop teaching, and I never found someone else.

    I still took the guitar out from time to time. I'd be listening to my music, hear a riff in there that I liked. I'd download the tab and dust off the guitar case, haul the thing out from next to my bed and start playing. My fingers would always be unprepared for the strings when I did this, lack of practice had seen the calluses required for playing steel string soften, and the guitar strings would bite in. Revenge for abandonment. This didn't deter me though. What deterred me was that if I couldn't learn the piece quickly enough, I would lose interest. The guitar never stayed out long in these sessions.

    Once I did persist at this for the better part of a day, determined that I would not let my lack of skill deter me - practice was all it would take. The guitar still sounded horrible under me, even a little worse after the high-e string snapped and I wasn't able to replace it with the same string as before. But I played and played and by the end of the day my fingers had been cut open and there were blood stains on the strings. I couldn't even clean all of the blood off, it had sunk in too deep and dried. At least it matched the red of the timber.

    By the time my fingers had healed, I had forgotten my resolution to take up guitar again, and it sat in its canvas case, gathering dust, next to my bed. It's still there, growing old and not entirely forgotten. Sometimes the fact that I remember it's there makes it worse that I won't play it. At one stage I was asked by my parents if I would give the guitar away to a cousin who was thinking of learning the guitar. I immediately said no, there was no thought involved. It struck me as selfish, but at the same time the thought of giving away the guitar was a finality - no hope of me ever getting any better at this instrument that always had and always will sound horrible when I play it. Besides, the blood on the strings was mine.

    A few months ago, I swapped rooms with my brother, him knowing that I'm to move out when I get back from Japan next year decided that he may as well have my larger room now, and I was relegated to his much smaller room. The guitar was one of the last things I moved, after everything had already been cleaned, and I had some time to spare. The thought to open the case crossed my mind, but went no further. So now it just sits, taunting, daring me to try again, play so hard that I bleed, and fall once again into despair at my inability to make beautiful sounds.