mental health part 1 (no edits)

 When I was young, I mostly felt ignored. So I became I tough kid or Tom-boy to protect myself.  I also became funny...at least people laughed. And when they did, I didn't feel ignored anymore, and for a time, the lowliness...the loneliness would subside.

I threw myself into theatre...all of myself. It was where the light was. 

I was in shows without ceasing from age 7 to age 19. I used to scan the paper at age ten and ride my bike to any audition I could find. By the end of high school my teachers were glad to see me go.  I delt with anxiety by preforming and causing trouble in class.  I was great in speech and debate and graduate with high honors in theatre arts.

I auditioned to a performing arts conservatory and was accepted.  I believe I got in because during the improv portion of the group audition, I was the last man standing and the Shakespeare monologue I had prepared was not too shabby. My dancing was shit and my singing was mid. But I had a heart full of love for the arts and I think that came through, so I was 1 of a class of 30 admitted in 1998.

Abandon, complete abandon.  That was the one thing I could do.  I could say yes with complete abandon on stage. I will not give myself much credit in life (I am my worst enemy and most of the time feel totally unworthy) But I could be in the moment on stage and I was "good" at that. Improv felt like something I was made for, kind of like an indescribable feeling of flying. It was  creation energy that I had learned to tap into on the purest level. I didn't know it then but I believe improv is also a form of writing. I later learned that many seasoned writers regard it as such.

Even as I think about what am going to say I want to scream at the page for beckoning me to it.  And I look at the date and it's my birthday...the day that I hate the most.

Having left home for the Conservatory to pursue my dream and learn more about what I loved so well, it was not long after that I was sexually assaulted. The police a day after I call and didn't bother finding the guy. They told me I shouldn't have been jogging alone and my housemates reminded me that they had told me so.

On top of all the other challenges I had faced that year it was all I could take.  I isolated the rest of the year and fell into a deep depression. During that time I was told by the director of the school that he "didn't think I was an artist".

By the end of the year, I went back home for the summer to recover but the shame never left me. I couldn't bare to go back to the Conservatory so I got a job and never went back. 

I tried to shake off the words of my mentors back at school. I joined a popular improv troupe and we performed regularly at comedy clubs. But it wasn't the same.

The shame I felt inside made me feel as though I had no right to be on stage and the sweet abandon I had once had was replaced with shame and feeling like an imposter and when I got on stage, everyone could see it.

The next few years were years were all depression and bad choices. Trying to push down hurt and shame. Convincing myself that my desire to to art was the pipedream of an attention hungry child who was just never really loved that well.