my childhood dream was to be a pop star
i loved more than anything singing in the car and i started writing songs when i was 12.
i was nervous but i set up a stage in my parents bedroom and asked them to watch but they never did and when i would sing karaoke, they told me to quiet down from the other room so that they could play video games or watch movies.
but anyone who ever heard me singing in choir or in the car complimented me, and my mom did pay for lessons for two years in high school even though I’m sure she couldn’t afford them.
i was introduced into electronic music production in high school, and was proud of my work, and did well in class. i’m still writing songs in my room with a guitar that my uncle gave me, though i dont know how to play it.
from 4th grade until my senior year of highschool, my parents were separated. I didnt care about eating cheap eggs and bread and frozen food everyday. i didnt care about watching trash tv and wearing thin clothes that ripped easily. this is normal. i cared that i saw explicit images in places that were supposed to be safe, that i was around immature men fifteen years older than me, that my mother was helplessly depressed, that my father drank to much.
i escaped as soon as i could to hang out with other random teenagers to do anything. i came home in the middle of the night and smoked weed all the time anywhere, which i was completely not allowed to do. so one intense incident happens and im still unpacking it almost 10 years later, but i know it isnt even that bad when you consider everyone in the whole world.
i went to rutgers new brunswick for an undecided degree, fell in love with the first person who loved music, looked nice, and talked to me. he was too afraid to comit to me but i’m an intense and clingy person in a relationship, and i didn’t get along with his friends much because im horrible at meeting new people.
my heart was broken but i decided that i would eventually transfer into the art department at rutgers to study music or acting or both. then i decided that an art history degree would give me the information i wanted and the piece of paper to make it worth it. then an old friend told me i could live like a television show and move to new york city without a degree.
i met someone who i thought would only be a friend but who opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. i hung around him more because of the things he showed me, and the way he looked at me, and the way i felt safe and far away from my life before. i told him about my dreams and my traumas and he seemed to fall more in love with me and i had cocoons and cocoons of butterflies weeks after week falling again and again and deeper and deeper.
we live in new york, he gets me a job, i get fired, i get another job. we travel around europe from time to time for concerts and art shows. I make an EP, do three shows in three years, score two short films of his, and make one music video. I am proud but i never took the time to network or gain an audience. my impatience and depression inhibit me completely. i am uneducated and overweight.
i wonder what would have happened to me if i stayed in school. i wonder, did this person save my life? did i waste my potential by being in love? is it all the same because i never really made a decision for myself and never acted out of courage? i guess i chose to drop out of school....
now i live with my parents in NJ because both of our depression and anxiety grew to an uncontrollable mass, convincing us that the city is dead or evil or both. he has to take care of his family and i need to start my own life without any of the guidance that i had before. no school, no person that really knew me and the world i saw, to see me every day anymore.
I try to find a community online and i find one, but still feel inferior, but still drink in their opinions of the world. i read books and occasionally press buttons on my computer to make cheap sounds and push out sounds from inside of myself like a meditative chant.
