The Passion Inside

When Your Demons Fuel Your Music We live in a world obsessed with quick fixes. Got a problem? Take a pill. Feeling down? Here's a prescription. But what happens when the very things that make you different—the things society wants to medicate away—are the same things that fuel your creativity and passion? That's the question I've wrestled with for years. The voices in my head, the synesthesia that lets me feel emotions in colors and sounds, the adaptive dreaming—all these "symptoms" that psychiatrists want to suppress are also what make my music and poetry flow. They're my double-edged sword: both my burden and my gift. The Price of Silencing Your Inner Storm I could take a pill tomorrow and make it all go away. I could be "normal." But at what cost? When I tried medication, something essential disappeared. The emotions went flat. The music dried up. The poetry lost its soul. Yes, the difficult parts faded—but so did everything else. I wasn't dealing with my demons; I was just locking them in a box where they couldn't touch me. But they couldn't inspire me either. "Taking a pill is not the answer to all their problems," I want to tell anyone facing similar struggles. "Understanding that the things that happened that we can't change back then, even though they're so bad and terrifying, we need to find another way to deal with mental health." Because putting it away for a moment isn't dealing with the underlying "why does it bother you?" Learning that is what I think is the most important part.

When Help Doesn't Help Here's something they don't tell you about seeking help: sometimes it makes things worse. You walk into a counselor's office, bare your soul for an hour, have all your emotional wounds ripped open—and then what? Time's up. See you next week. Drive home. Go to work. Take care of your family. All while bleeding inside from freshly reopened traumas. "Just opening a person up for an hour and then saying goodbye, have a nice day—that's not gonna work." What if therapists took twenty minutes at the end of each session to discuss what was just "destroyed" in your mind? To find out how to deal with what they just opened up? To help you process and find some closure before sending you back into the world? This isn't about avoiding the hard work of healing. It's about making sure people have the tools and support they need to navigate their emotions after therapy sessions. It's about creating a safety net, ensuring no one is left hanging after having their emotional guts spilled on the floor. Finding Your Voice Through the Noise My journey to healing didn't follow any traditional path. I dropped out of school. Working with my hands—building, creating, staying busy—that's what helped me cope. And then I found music. During COVID, something shifted. I started using StarMaker, found myself drawn into chat rooms, and the voices in my head became clearer, more purposeful. Sometimes I'd get a name in my head, say it out loud, and that exact person would pop into my live chat. I couldn't ignore that something bigger was happening. "Now, sometimes—like at three in the morning—I get this urge to go live, and sure enough, someone out there needs help." Music became more than just expression; it became connection. The very things that made me different—the things society labeled as "illness"—became my superpower for helping others.

The Truth About Answers You know what nobody tells you? Even when you finally get all the answers, they never really make things okay. It's almost like the answers don't matter, not really. What matters is that we're here now, carrying everything that's happened—struggles, pain, anger, betrayal, vanity, all that backstabbing. That's life sometimes. Nobody warns you that growing up means learning to carry so much. The truth is, there aren't many truly good people left who actually want to help, who really show up for others. And when you feel lost with no one to talk to, it's a lonely place. But sometimes, those voices in your head—the ones society wants to medicate away—they become your companions. They become the spark of creativity that gets you through the darkest nights. They become the passion that drives you to create music that touches others who are struggling just like you. Turning Pain Into Purpose "I've been hurt so many different ways that, honestly, I shouldn't even know how to love. I shouldn't have any passion left—but somehow, I do. Someone saved me before I became another monster. Now I feel like it's my job to try and stop the next one from being made." That's the beautiful paradox: the very struggles that could have destroyed me have instead become my greatest purpose. The pain I've experienced has given me the ability to connect with others who are hurting, to create music that speaks to their souls, to show up in those 3 AM moments when someone needs to hear they're not alone. God doesn't train warriors the way we think. He doesn't seek out the perfect, the unblemished, the unbroken. Instead, "He uses the people who've been hurt, abused, and taken advantage of." Those who have walked through fire know how to guide others through the flames.

Embracing Your Whole Self My passion today isn't just making music—it's helping others understand that their struggles don't have to define them. That the very things that cause them pain can also be sources of incredible creativity and connection. I'm not suggesting everyone should avoid medication or traditional therapy. That's a personal decision that should be made carefully with proper guidance. What I am saying is that sometimes, the parts of ourselves that seem most broken are also the parts that make us uniquely gifted. Learning to embrace your whole self—the light and the dark, the "normal" and the "different"—that's where true healing begins. And sometimes, that means finding ways to channel your pain into passion rather than simply numbing it away. The Past Cannot Be Changed Nothing that happened yesterday can be changed. This simple truth took me years to fully accept. The abuse, the trauma, the betrayals—none of it can be undone. But what we do with those experiences? That's entirely up to us. We can let them consume us, or we can transform them into fuel for something meaningful. For me, that meaningful something is music. It's poetry. It's connecting with others who are struggling and showing them that there's hope on the other side of pain. It's using my experiences—both the beautiful and the terrible—to create art that resonates with people who need to know they're not alone. Your Turn to Find Your Passion Everyone has a unique journey. Everyone has their own demons to face, their own gifts to discover. The question isn't whether you have passion inside you—you do. The question is whether you're willing to embrace all of yourself, even the parts that hurt, to find it. Maybe for you, like me, it's music. Maybe it's painting or writing or cooking or teaching or something entirely different. Whatever it is, I believe it's often found in the places we're most afraid to look—in our vulnerabilities, our differences, our struggles. The passion inside isn't something that needs to be created; it's something that needs to be uncovered. It's already there, waiting for you to clear away the debris of self-doubt, societal expectations, and quick-fix solutions that never really fixed anything. So instead of asking, "How can I get rid of this pain?" try asking, "What is this pain trying to teach me? Where might it be leading me? What passion might be hiding inside it?" Because the most powerful music—and the most meaningful lives—come from embracing our whole selves, wounds and all. The passion inside isn't found despite our struggles; it's often found because of them. And that's something no pill can give you.