Will Yourself Out of Wanting Anything

When I was five years old I wanted to be a country singer
It was one of those great big dreams that small children have
Like, “When I grow up I’m going to be an ice cream truck!”
Or “I’m going to be the president AND a Power Ranger!”
The kind of dream that would weigh down an adult with self-doubt and anxiety
But makes anyone under the age of ten soar
I firmly believed that I would be a Grammy award winner by the time I hit my teens
And the feeling was so strong that it drowned out every unsupportive word my mother said
There were stars in my eyes and it never occurred to me that others might see me as blind

When I was nine years old I wanted to work for NASA
I was in third grade when I fell in love with Yale University,
Theoretical astrophysics, and my best friend’s telescope.
I told anyone who would listen that I was going to be valedictorian
And even though my mother told me I would never get in
I knew that before I turned eighteen I would be on my way
To Yale and to my future as an aeronautical engineer slash
Theoretical astrophysicist slash astronomer slash rockstar.
If I couldn't be a star, I sure as hell was going to study them.

When I was thirteen years old I wanted to be a comic book artist
My hands never stilled in class, constantly scratching my pencil across any surface
I could get my graphite stained palms on
I was going to go to school in New York City
Live in a tiny apartment with too many people
And survive on too much coffee and too little sleep
I dreamt in black and white sketches and spoke in interjections
Knocking back my mother’s disapproval with a mighty KA-POW!
So what if I didn't have enough talent to be a singer
Or the grades and influence to make it in the Ivy Leagues?
I believed in the beauty of art and in my own creativity.
My hands were going to draw me into the perfect future.

When I was fifteen years old I wanted to work for the FBI
Researched everything I could about behavioral analysis
I brought home book after book of increasingly worrying titles such as
Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders
And The Sociopath Next Door and my mother started looking more and more worried
As if she thought my obsession with serial killers meant that
I wanted to be a serial killer, despite the fact that when I played softball
I would cry when I accidentally hit someone with a pitch
I devoured book after book after book and could almost imagine
This too-small town was somewhere better, somewhere like Quantico
And sure, I was too nervous to sing, to unfocused for NASA, too insecure for art
But abnormalities of the psyche seemed comfortable enough for me
A little offbeat niche to call home.

When I was seventeen years old I wanted to die
The panic I felt as days drew closer and closer to my eighteenth birthday
Made me feel like I was choking on my own mortality
The future was an atomic wasteland—
Nothing but bleak, white emptiness
Depression had stripped me of my ability to feel anything but despair
And then it stripped me of that as well
And I thought there was nothing worse than hating every atom in my body
Until I was consumed by apathy
I hated every moment of my existence
Or I would, if I knew how to feel anymore
Depression wasn't a word I knew how to apply to myself
What I know now as bipolar disorder back then I called
Self-pity.
I would never be a singer because I was talentless
Never go to Yale because I was stupid
Never create comics because I was an uncreative hack
Never work for the FBI because I was useless
Never see eighteen because I was weak, selfish, self-pitying
Everyone had a future but me.

I am twenty-one and I don’t know what I want to be
But I still want to be
And that’s the important bit.
It’s taken this long to learn but I am more than the criticisms of my past
More than my disorder, my self-imposed goals and unrealistic time frames
I am still that starry eyed dreamer, that hopeful young scientist,
An artist all my own, and a puzzle master for the abstract mind.
I am goddamned brilliant and I will not let apathy wither my soul again.