A breakdown to reach a breakthrough.

I’ve always been the odd duckling. Never quite fitting in, never really wanting to either. I preferred to be on my own, just doing my own thing. I wasn’t someone who desperately wanted to be part of the crowd because I believed I was born to stand out. 

I spent my childhood deciding I would become a movie star and therefore needed to overcome my intense social anxiety to achieve it. I spent hours watching interviews with Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Lawrence, and any female actress I could relate to. From the age of 10, I would force myself to go to acting classes every weekend and beg my mom to take me to auditions. Until I would arrive there and have a complete breakdown and be unable to even walk into the room. My mom would be frustrated after listening to me nag for weeks only to bottle it, and I would feel intense shame for wanting something so badly yet not being able to. 

This cycle went on for years until I hit high school and realized that maybe acting wasn’t for me. But, I always felt guilty about it. Like I missed out on an opportunity just because I was scared. I let myself get in the way of what I wanted, or thought I wanted, and there was no one to blame but me.

I dabbled in music for a few years, even recording an EP (that’s a fancy word for a couple of songs long album) with my band at the time and then that fizzled out once high school finished and we went our separate ways. Throughout this time I continued struggling with anxiety and depression until it reached its peak at 22 and I had a breakdown. It took me to think to myself that life was not worth living one more day if it continued like this. The next day I got an emergency appointment to see a psychiatrist and therapist. I started taking antidepressants and, slowly but surely, crawled my way out of a deep dark hole that I hope to never be in again. 

When you face something as scary as your own mortality and survive, you realize that there isn’t anything to lose. You suddenly see the world differently, less as this outside experience to watch and more as an exciting activity to be in, and for me, I felt like I finally stopped looking at life from afar and stepped through, if that makes any sense. I finally began to actually live. 

“So, I’m moving to Amsterdam. I’m just doing it, and fuck it, I’ll figure things out along the way.” My friend Maddie told me this late one night after we’d made vegan pasta and watched trash tv. She’d dropped out of college and come home to figure things out, and we’d spent the last month hanging out at any chance we could get. Maddie decided over that month that she ultimately wanted to go to school in Europe, but needed to make some money first. So, she applied to be a nanny for a family in a small town 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam. 

“That sounds amazing. I wish I could come.” I’d joked. Moving overseas was such an adventurous idea and definitely not one I would ever be able to do by myself. Maddie was brave and I was so proud of her. “Then come, at least to visit,” she’d responded. 

Then something completely out of character happened to me, I felt like I could be brave too. Maybe not on a Maddie level of moving to a new country I’d never been to completely by myself. But, I could have my own mini adventure. I thought back to where I had just been and how far I’d come. What did I even have to lose? 

So that night, we found an apartment for me to rent in Amsterdam for one month. I would spend the weeks alone traipsing through the city and then on the weekends, Maddie would come to visit me. It was the perfect plan. 

Other than the fact that I was scared shitless. And I’d never done anything like this before. It was so out of character for the anxiety-ridden depressed person I’d become. But I told myself I was no longer that person, and I was allowed to change. To grow. To become someone new. Or maybe, to return to who I was truly meant to be all along.

I spoke with my therapist about it and he agreed it was a great idea. My parents too. 

Damn it, I thought, now everyone knows so I really have to do it. 

A few weeks after Maddie moved, I packed a large suitcase with winter clothes for the Netherlands in February, got all the paperwork for my dog, Charlotte, to come with me, and off we went. I’d never been so scared in my life, and I’d never felt so free. 

So alive. 

So me.

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Things I’ve Been Enjoying This Week…

• Outwitting The Devil by Napoleon Hill

• Carrie Rad’s Homesteading Vlogs

• Manifestation Babe’s Podcast Episode on How To Get What You Really Want

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