The curtains rise on the acts of my life,

And already there's confusion among the crowd.

Nobody's bullied me.

Nobody's pushed me,

Nobody's jeered,

Nobody's called me names,

Nobody was the villain of this play.

 

And yet,

In spite of there being no evil duke in a wine red cloak,

There seemed to be conflict.

"How can there be fighting," you may ask,"if there is no antagonist? 

No duels? No monologues? No maniacal laughter?

Absurd, good lady, simply absurd!"

And I would agree with you, noble playgoer,

If I didn't already know who the culprit was.

 

During spring semester last year,

I fell into a slump in a silent storm.

My grades dropped, my writing stopped, 

And I holed up in my room

Every spare moment I could.

Only to stare at the smudged-up wall.

Lost in that black sea of numbness.

The constant exhaustion of carrying the weight of the world 

On your shoulders day in and day out.

The sinking feeling of drowning in expectations.

When you know there's light

But you just can't seem to see it

No matter how hard you look.

I lost my motivation.

I lost my drive.

My passion.

My will.

I felt inferior to every single person I saw,

And I convinced myself that

Nobody would want to be around

Such a useless, stupid, weak, abnormal, hypersensitive,

Pathetic crybaby like me.

 

My sole escape from my own escape was

My school's creative writing club.

I shared some of my writing with them,

And for the first time in what felt like millennia, 

They supported me.

They were people that wrote,

People that understood me,

People that could help me find something.

To this day, I don't know what that something was.

 

Whatever that something was, it saved me.

I had faith in myself again, some sense of significance

In this great, overpopulated world.

I no longer looked in the mirror at six o'clock every morning

And thought to myself, "I wish I was someone else."

I do not have to avoid my friends for fear of breaking down

Out of the awareness of my inferiority. 

I do not have to hide in the bathroom and cry after school.

I do not have to stare at the blank walls of my bedroom

And wish I could fall asleep and drift forever.

No.

 

I am the star of my theatre.

I am the primadonna.

I am the center of the stage in all my loud, opinionated, expressive,

And often onomatopoeic pansexual glory.

And I have every right to be here, and be proud of all I have achieved,

Of all of my quirks, of all of my scars, 

Of all of the duels I have fought, of the war I have won 

Against my villain.

The play does not end here.

This is merely the beginning.

Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the show.