Trigger warning. Sensitive topics discussed in this blog post. Crisis line: 988
In wonderful music news:
My song “The Storm” from Follow The Voices won Lyric Finalist in the International Songwriting Competition! 1 of 17 Lyric Finalists out of 18,000 total entries in all categories. Crazy.
It's very corny, this façade we put up on the internet. This “best foot forward” thing. I sometimes don't even know how to think about this blog. Should I be my normal self or should I be all business? I've found myself self-editing in the past in part because there are people in my own family who read what I write and have used it to fuel their never-ending nuclear family feud. It’s stressful, the toxicity.
I so often just want to have a dialogue. Have a platform and put out ideas. I'm tired of being afraid to talk about who I am. I'm an incredibly lonely person almost all the time. In the first part of this year there were some very, very dark times. All of them directly attributed to the collapse of everything around me due to lack of job. And I didn't know a lot of nights if I was going to be okay. Humiliated, sleepless, shaking, broke. Bulimia roared back I don't know a dozen times or so. I sometimes have an out of control relationship with food. I saw some incredible financial chips to play towards my new record's growth now completely vanished from the checking account along with everything else. Many nights I was wondering if me envisioning throwing myself out the window or off my balcony would actually become real life. How would I land, would I somersault, would I land on glass?
Sometimes it feels like too much, you know? I maybe have under-estimated the mental illness I think I'll be living with for the rest of my life. I just feel different. I've always felt different. I don't have this “oh I've got a mental illness therefore I'm gonna sit behind a guitar and write 25 songs in a week” thing. God I wish I had that. I have the “I have a mental illness I feel dead all over I can't move.” So it's almost always been incredibly difficult for me to even be in the right mind to sit down with my guitar and do anything.
I felt like just being honest and personal tonight.
I'll try to be more in touch. Maybe there's more than a handful of people reading this who know how it feels to go through what I've described. The terror of it all. If you see me around will you just hug me please? Don't even ask. I need it.