Diary entry #1: Dark Night of the Soul?
So it's almost 2am, have to be up in 4 hours to attend this mandatory driving class, then skip to work right after. See, I'm almost 35 without a license. I got away with it for so long because I lived in NY all my life. But now, here in CT, it's a whole different ball game.
I'm at a place in my life right now where I've hit a major wall. That wall is called major discouragement. All the assumed follows: depression, anxiety, stress, fear,...I feel I'm on the verge of a near-breakdown. I've realized I've wasted so much time and now I'm afraid it's too late to reach my dreams.
Since I was 8 years old, I made up in my heart and mind that I wanted to be a singer..that I would be a singer...a big, famous one. I don't know how I knew, but I did. I told my mother so assuredly that it would happen for me. Funny thing is, I didn't even posses the talent to sing, nor was I around or related to anyone who could. But it was deep, very deep, in my heart. I was raised hearing a lot of salsa and merengue, but what I felt was SOUL. I gravitated to it like nobody's business. Luther Vandross, Vanessa Williams, Aretha Franklin, and then...my god, Whitney Houston. It was at that time when she dropped "I Will Always Love You" that I knew music was for me, and I for it, and I began writing. I wrote songs I had no business writing...songs about love and relationships that I knew nothing about. But Whitney's song inspired me. And then, I began to sing every song she made, following her every note closely. By the time I was 12, I was mimicking Mariah. I was dedicated. Every day I'd run home from school, drop my bag, and throw her on to study the magic she'd do with her voice. I remember the day I recorded myself singing along to her song on a tape deck while listening to her on the headphones. The playback was so bad I cried for days..but for some reason I kept trying. One day, and I don't know when, but by the time I was 14, I possessed a talent that now had my family saying I could be the next Selena! A talent that had strangers lining up by the recording booth at Six Flags to see who it was that had gone in to record a cover of Changing Faces' "G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T" and that was now playing on the loud speakers throughout the park!
So throughout my teens, I kept writing, kept singing, and kept believing my day would come. But life happened. My focus was thrown in so many different directions that now I'm here in my mid-thirties wondering WTF happened. My growth was stunted in so many areas of my life that I'm starting to think I've kidded myself. I'm now a part-time employee at Edible Arrangements, raising a pre-teen child(who is thankfully a great kid) from a former domestic violence relationship(and you can find that on public record), in a new town with no car, no friends, estranged from family, struggling to get ahead financially, with PTSD and a lot of other things, while attending therapy to heal from a lifetime of trauma(to be discussed in detail in other posts), and trying to find the time in all this madness to record my music in a home studio while also Steeming.
Why I'm writing this blog? Well, because Steemit may be my only hope left. As I've mentioned on my recent introduction to this site, I planned to share my story with y'all, my spiritual journey thus far, and my music. What I hadn't planned was to document my present struggles, but I now think it's probably the best thing I can do. I've decided that I'm going to commit myself to "Soulwork". This is the process of healing myself to a point of wholeness in the Soul through a belief system that incorporates psychology, spiritualism, and shamanism(I will be explaining more about it as I go), and as I go, I hope that I can receive the support from my fellow steemians in reclaiming my life and finally achieving my childhood and lifelong dreams of successfully sharing my music with the world.
Thank you for reading. 3 and a half hours left of sleep. Goodnight.
(and while I have professionally recorded songs I can show you, right now I'm going to leave you with a live raw recording of an Adele cover so you can judge my talent for yourselves)