I grew up in a broken home with an abusive mom. Without a role model to show me otherwise, I just assumed that this was the normal way families were. I would express myself as a child using violence, and it wasn’t really until about my teen years that I started to understand how wrong that was. I looked back at how many people I hurt and I began hating myself. I pushed away people I liked because a monster like me shouldn’t be near real people. After high school, I was forced in to college, but I would often just not go because I didn’t deserve to be there in my eyes. All these people around me had such drive and passion to be there, while I didn’t. My lowest point in life was when my dad stopped paying child support when I turned 18 and my mom kicked me out rendering me homeless. A few friends who I was unable to push away offered me their couches, but I had never felt more useless or alone. I dropped out of school and stopped going to work.
A few weeks later my dad called me. He had found out what happened to me and wanted to give me a home, but for me it never felt like home. Even with all my stuff put away I still felt like I was in the way. So I continued my poltergeist-like existence of going to work, coming home, going to my room, and just hiding in the dark- never truly interacting with the people around me – too scared to try anything because my self-worth had been shattered for 20 years.
Until I saw a video that created a spark in me. It’s called “Letter to a young American” and it’s a motivational video by one of my music idols, Henry Rollins of Black Flag. To summarize, it’s a talk about how you shouldn’t let your circumstances discourage you from giving 100% to things you care about. Unfortunately at that moment I didn’t have anything I cared about, but dang it if it didn’t inspire me to find something!
I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I figured it would be back at school with all those passionate driven people I remember. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I had this voice SCREAMING in the back of my head that I don’t belong, that I should leave, but I just closed my eyes and charged forward. My blind charging eventually led me to Kent State where I study computer animation. Along the way, I have impressed professors and students with my work, but I still had that little nasty voice that wrote them all off. It wasn’t until I got a letter notifying me I had made the Dean’s List that the little voice in my head disappeared. I don’t know if it was the fact that I earned it without attempting to, or if it was just having a physical letter in my hands, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t putting myself down.
Since then, I have really come out of my shell and I try all kinds of things I wouldn’t have before – from surfing to joining school clubs- because now I truly believe: If I approach life with a positive and healthy energy, then there is nothing I can’t overcome.
If you are interested, here is the full video by Henry Rollins and the Big Think:
amolnar10 