it’s like a blessing and a curse, you know. And it makes my life really shitty, but it makes me really kind and giving and caring and have a lot of friends and a like really interesting person. I’m super creative, you know, like. I do, like, I’m really smart and that’s also because of the illness, so you know, it sucks a lot of the time, but I wouldn’t be as, you know, musically talented or artistically inclined I feel if I didn’t have it, you know. I wouldn’t be as sensitive a person or as kind of a person, that much I know for sure.

It gives me a strength and an understanding towards others because I know what it feels like to be fragile. I know what it feels like to be on the verge of killing yourself or on the verge of harming yourself. So I’m more capable of being sympathetic. And it helps me deal with my friends who have depression. It helps me understand them better and they seem to be drawn to my energy and positivity because that’s something that a lot of people with depression don’t have. And that’s the reason I have it, that’s the reason I project it, is because I understand that so many people just don’t have it. So it’s helped me realize where others might need help and where I need help and how that can fit together.

I’m more aware, that’s the biggest thing. The whole emotional awareness, I was so unaware of my emotions, like, a few years ago. And that’s the other thing that’s surprising too, it’s like, man, if I’m gonna get to this level now like where am I gonna be later? But, this whole journey has been, it’s just the whole awareness that’s changed. And once you’re aware of something it’s a lot different, like, if let’s say, try to think of an example like, if you not, if you haven’t been aware of something, it’s the whole what you don’t know can’t hurt type, ignorance is bliss, that type of thing, like, if you don’t know or you’re now aware, you just don’t know, you just don’t think about it. So awareness has been the biggest thing. And it makes you like, you’re more on, ah, I’m feeling like this because of this, I’m feeling like this because of this, I’m feeling like this because of this.

I always had this ability I guess to be able to tell people’s emotions even when they weren’t showing anything on their face. And I guess that might be because I was so neglected from emotion by my mother from for those 13 years or whatever but that actually helped me because I was actually able to help other people out and that’s always what I’ve cared most about you know helping others you know, even if that means sacrificing my own help that is needed. I’ve always just wanted to help other people and from what I figured out was that if I could be around these other people who had these emotions that needed help I could, I would gain them so much so that it has continued now. When I’m in crowds I can feel everybody else’s emotions just by looking at them. And I seem to gain those emotions, I think there’s a term for it it’s called like empath or something like that.

For a long period of time in first couple years of school which I was extremely depressed, it did make doing theater work, which is the kind of art that I most want to create with my life, made it somewhat unpeaceful. Theater does demand a consistent and rigorous commitment to attending rehearsals regularly, to being vulnerable, to the somewhat extreme emotional demands working in a story can take you to. It does necessitate open frequent communication with many, many other people, but in a way it has also given me this unique perspective that I have that nobody else does with which I can tap into certain stories and certain characters and certain moves and tease them out of their actors, out of myself if I’m acting or other actors if I’m directing, out of designers and out of anyone who works on a show. It gives me this ability to engage with the art I want to make on an emotional level that I don’t think I would be able to access if I weren’t drawing from this pain in my past.