AUDIO ESSAY
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The Light Inside
(Open with noise)
Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away
Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.
Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”
(noise Stop)
That’s a snipit of a poem by Miranda Renea
I started my battle with depression when I was about ten years old and gradually that turned into a battle with anxiety and insomnia as well. Years down the line it recently got topped off with PTSD
I spent years using self-destructive methods to “help” and “heal” myself. It wasn’t till I found theatre in high school that I found an okay outlet and it wasn’t till Sophomore year of college that within theatre I found my sanctuary, light designing.
I used to count the hours and minutes till I could try to fall asleep because that was where I finally felt sane. I didn’t feel a gaping hole inside of me and every breath didn’t feel like I was breaking inside. Smiles became harder to fake and I was a constant state of numb.
(music?)
I started my journey of sanity when I started using work and theatre classes as a creative outlet. Light designing lets me use all those feelings I have and make them into colors and I can channel those feelings into pieces of art that go with scenes, shows, concerts, etc. It wakes something within me and my escape from stressors and triggers lies in the way looks get made from simple commands I put in a console.
Depression, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD ran my life and it still does some days, but even with all the bad it put me through it helped me find my career. It’s weird to say a mental illness shaped who I am, but it has. No I’m not my illness, but I can’t ignore the fact that it has made me who I am today. I function differently than if I didn’t have it and I’ve come to accept that. It doesn’t run my life though, just helped guide me in a twisted way to find something I get pure happiness from. Colors light up my dark and fuzzy mind and some days I just need light to guide my life.